philosophy in film

Ron, meet reality.

And “in reality” everything we once thought had constituted our lives can be yanked the fuck out from under us. And that includes life itself. And when reality suddenly changes in a big, big way a whole bunch of the way we once thought about it can start to slip and to slide out from under us too. And in ways that we never saw coming at all.

Adapt or die. Or adapt and die anyway.

In other words, Ron gets AIDS. And this is back in 1985. In Texas. It was a time [especially there…and around these folks] when if you had AIDS everyone assumed you were gay – and everyone assumed you were contagious. It scared the shit out of people. So you became…taboo.

Ron though is pretty much a loathsome scumbag. And not just because he is a white heterosexual male from Texas. Instead, it revolves more around the manner in which he conducts his entire life from the perspective of one or another sub-mental prejudice. Everyone is put in a box and it makes absolutely no difference what they think, feel or do: They are in Ron’s box and that’s that. And down South these dumb bastards are everywhere.

Only Ron bumps into contingency chance and change and his point of view starts to…evolve.

Bottom line: Ron suddenly finds himself facing a very hostile world; and he soon realizes that if he is going to survive longer than they predict he will [30 days tops] he’s got to…improvise. And you can’t say he doesn’t have a strong will to live.

Here it is all over again: The fucking politics of AIDS. The fucking politics of capitalism. The rest as they say is history. I mean, talk about exposing how “the system” works! Crony capitalism at it’s most cynical depths.

In part, Ron is the hero because he bucks “the system” and actually succeeds in prolonging the lives of folks with AIDS. At the same time he is still a piece of shit though. He just mimics the system in that all he really cares about is coming up with a new one. It’s all about him. If someone is sick and dying but can’t afford to join the “buyers club”, well, fuck him. But that changes too.

IMDb

[b]The budget was so low for this film that only two-hundred and fifty dollars ($250) was allotted to the Makeup department. Amazingly, the film’s artists were able to work within that figure, and the film’s Makeup and Hairstyling won an Oscar.

Matthew McConaughey lost 47 pounds in assuming his role as an AIDS patient. Newspapers reported his new looks as “terribly gaunt” and “wasting away to skin and bones”. Jared Leto lost 30 pounds for his role.[/b]

And we’re talking in the vicinity of Christian Bale from The Machinist here.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club
trailer: youtu.be/cC6mv0KhOBY

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB [2013]
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

[b]Ron: Did ya hear Rock Hudson was a cock sucker?
Rog: Whered ya hear that shit?!
Ron: It’s called a newspaper. Right there. It’s a shame, ain’t it? All that fine Hollywood pussy, just all being wasted.
Rog: Who the hell’s Rock Hudson anyway?
Ron: He’s an actor, dumbass. Haven’t you ever seen North By Northwest?

…

Doctor Sevard: We saw something which… which concerned us. In your initial blood work. So, we ran some additional tests.
Dr. Saks: It’s your blood tests.
Ron: What kinda blood tests. Cause I don’t use drugs.
Doctor: We didn’t test your blood for drugs.
Ron: Cause, that ain’t none of yer business anyway.
Doctor: You’ve tested positive for HIV…which is the virus that causes AIDS.
Ron: Are you fucking kidding me? Isn’t that that fucking Rock cocksucking Hudson bullshit?!

…

Doctor Sevard: Have you ever engaged in homosexual conduct?
Ron: Homo? Did you say, Homo?
Doctor: Yes.
Ron: Are you fucking kidding me? I aint no faggot, motherfucker. I don’t even know no fucking faggots. Look at me. What do you see…huh? A goddamn rodeo is what you see!

…

Doctor Sevard: Mr. Woodroof, If you could listen to me for a moment. I know this can be a very scary thing. And, you’re probably feeling alone right now. But, what we’d like to do is to impress upon you the gravity of your situation. Based on your health. Based on your condition, based on all the evidence we have, we estimate that you have about thirty days left. To put your affairs in order.
Ron: Thirty days?
Doctor: I’m sorry.
Ron: Fuck this! What is this shit?! Fucking thirty days. Motherfukers! Let me give y’all a little news flash. There ain’t nothin’ out there can kill fuckin’ Ron Woodroof in 30 days.

…

Big Pharma rep: Sadly, the AIDS crisis will only get worse before it gets better. And, I know I speak for everyone at Avonex when I say, this is a unique opportunity. A chance to be on the forefront in finding a cure.[/b]

And to make a small fortune doing it!

[b]Dr. Saks: Does it not drive you just a little bit crazy to see these guys talking about curing the sick while they’re flashing gold Rolexes? What do they know about sick patients?
Dr. Sevard: They’re Big Pharma reps, not doctors. And like it or not, this is a business.

…

Ron: Can you get me AZT? I know the Avonex industries just released it for testing, right? I wanna buy some, now.
Dr. Saks: That isn’t how it works. For about a year, a group of patients will either get the drug or a placebo. It’s totally left up to chance, not even the doctors are allowed to know.
Ron: You give dyin people sugar pills?
Dr. Saks: It’s the only way to know if a drug works.

…

Ron: How about this stuffs, overseas…huh? In Germany, they got this…Dextran Sulfate. They got this DDC in France…It’s suppose to keep the healthy cells you got from getting the HIV. They got AL 721 over in Israel…How can I get some of this?
Dr. Saks: None of those drugs have been approved by the FDA.
Ron: Screw the FDA, I’m gonna be DOA.

…

Dr. Saks: You’re in the hospital. You almost died.
Ron: I bet that didn’t surprise anybody.

…

Rayon: I’m Rayon.
Ron: Congratulations. Now fuck off and go back to your bed.
Rayon: Relax, I don’t bite. I guess you’re handsome, in a Texas, hick, white trash, dumb kind of way.
Ron: Get the fuck out of here, whatever you are, before I kick you in the fucking face.

…

Dr. Saks: Mr. Woodroof! Where are you going?
Ron: I signed myself out.
Dr. Saks: You’re too sick to leave here.
Ron: The worst-case scenario bein’ what?
Dr. Saks: We can keep you comfortable.
Ron: What? Hook me up to the morphine drip. Let me fade in and out? Nah, sorry lady, but I prefer to die with my boots on.

…

Painted on Ron’s trailer: FAGGOT BLOOD

…

Ron: I thought AZT’s supposed to help me.
Dr. Vass: The only people AZT helps are the people who sell it. It kills every cell it comes in contact with.

…

Ron: I still got HIV?
Dr. Vass: You will always test positive for HIV. And now you’ve got AIDS from all the toxic shit you’ve put in your body. You’ve shut your immune system and now you’ve got chronic pneumonia, among other things. It could cause memory loss, mood swings, aching joints.
Ron: So if it sucks, I got it.

…

Dr. Vass: This is DDC, it acts as an anti viral similar to AZT but less toxic. And this is Peptide T, it’s a protein – totally non-toxic. Early studies have shown it these can help with all of that. This is what I had you on since you got here.
Ron: And you can’t buy them back in the U.S.A?
Dr. Vass: No, not approved.

…

Doctor Sevard: Well, test results are overwhelmingly positive. AZT works.
Dr. Saks: We don’t know, what the long term effects are. It’s irresponsible.
Doctor Sevard: These people are dying, Eve. There are no long-term effects.

…

Rayon [to Ron]: You know what? You don’t deserve our money, you homophobic asshole.

…

Ron: Well, I ain’t selling drugs no more, Counselor. I’m giving ‘em away. For free. By selling memberships. Four hundred dollars a month in dues and you get, all the meds you want.
David: You son of a bitch!
Ron: Bitches. Plural. There’s a bunch of faggots up in New York. Runnin’ a hell of a racket. Just like this. That’s where I got the idea. Welcome to the Dallas Buyers Club!

…

Reporter on TV: AZT has been approved as the first drug to treat AIDS. At a cost of $10,000 per year per patient, AZT is the most expensive drug ever marketed. Avonex stock jumped a whopping 12%.

…

Ron [to two new members of the “club”]: Meds and the Treatments are free, but the membership is $400 a month. Alright, you’re gonna have to sign a waiver. We are not responsibility for the drugs that we give you. You croak, you croak. Thats not our problem. It’s yours.

…

Ron [in the grocery store examining the ingredients on a food package]: Now, that’s the shit that’ll rot your insides. What a surprise, FDA approved.

…

Ron: I don’t trust the white coat who’s trying to sell me the drugs. I fed-ex it to Seattle to my lab there and they test if for me. Then, I test it all on myself before I give it to anyone.
Dr. Saks: I respect that you’re learning about your illness but some of these people need to be in the hospital.
Ron: Why? All they want is to serve up AZT.
Dr. Saks: AZT helps eradicate the virus.
Ron: Fuck the virus, Dr.Saks. You know this. Once you got that, you’re married to it. AZT or not. We’re talking about symptoms and survival.

…

Ron: People can live with this thing for longer than they’re saying. Ninety-six-percent of people in the U.S.A who have AIDS today, are gonna die within six months.
Dr. Saks: I know the statistics.
Ron: Then use them. You don’t give AZT somebody with broken immune system? It’s toxic!
Dr. Saks: If you’re abusing it, like you did, and you’re just taking it without medical surveillance, of course it is.
Ron: Yeah, I did abuse it. But I’m off it now, look at me. I’m here, feeling great. And I’m not the only one.

…

Dr. Sevard: Where the hell are my trial patients?

…

Ron: I swear it, Ray, God sure was dressin’ the wrong doll when he blessed you with a set of balls.

…

Reporter on TV: Things returned to normal today at FDA headquaters outside Washington. A day after the arrest of 175 demonstrators. The protestors, some of whom are dying from AIDS, brought their interests to the FDA complex. They were demanding faster action on new drugs to fight the deadly virus.

…

Ron: For the hundredth time, just take a fuckin’ look at my research.
Richard Barkley: Mr.Woodroof, I wouldnt want you to spend your last days in jail. If you have a product you’d like tested, fill out an application and go through the process.
Ron: Don’t threaten me, motherfucker! The “process”? That’s FDA bullshit for pay up!

…

Ron: These fuckers are coming at me, man, from all angles. I wanna file a restraining order.
David: Against who?
Ron: Against the government and the fucking FDA, that’s who!

…

Ron [to a group of potential club members]: We got a club. Just down the street, where you can get the meds that I’m talking about. We treat more than five times the amount of patients as the large AIDS clinics. And get this…We got one tenth the death ratio.

…

Rayon [in despair]: I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!

…

Dr. Vass: Check this out. It’s The Lancet medical review. And they published a study conducted in France. It proves AZT alone is too toxic for most to tolerate and had no lasting effect on HIV blood levels. Of course, Avonex industries and the NIH didn’t include the study in their press release.
Ron: No of course they didn’t.
Dr. Vass: Now, these are early trial results for Fluconazole.
Ron: The anti-fungal? I read about this.
Dr. Vass: You want to take some home?
Ron: As much as I can carry.

…

Ron: Anemia, Cancer, Bone Marrow depletion. Seizures, Fever, Hearing loss, Impotence, Neuropathy…Sound like AIDS to you? Nah, that there comes in a box of AZT, a list of side effects. No wonder, Rayon is dead.
Dr. Saks: Rayon was a drug addict! He didn’t die for one day on AZT. He died from the disease as a whole!

…

Richard Barkley: Mr.Woodroof, would you kindly, tell us what you are doing?
Ron: Just giving people information, Richard. About this trial I’m in. And, make sure they know what’s going on.
Richard Barkley: And, what is going on?
Ron: Why did you cut off, Peptide T, Richard? Non toxic drug, that I got proof works. Not only that but the national institute of mental health, your own people, says it’s completely safe.
Richard Barkley: Mr Woodroof, I’m afraid that you’re nothing more than a common drug dealer, so if you’ll excuse us…
Ron: Oh, I’m the drug dealer? No, you’re the fuckin’ drug dealer. I mean, goddamn, people are dyin’. And y’all are up there afraid that we’re gonna find an alternative without you. See, the Big Pharma companies pay the FDA to push their product. Fuck no, they don’t wanna see my research. I don’t have enough cash in my pocket to make it worth their while.

…

Ron: Do you ever miss your regular life?
Dr. Saks: Regular life? What is that? It doesn’t exist.
Ron: Yeah, I guess. No, I know, I just… I just wanna…
Dr. Saks: What?
Ron: Ice-cold beer, a little riding in. Well, take my woman dancing. You know? I want kids. I mean, I got one…one life, right? Mine. But sh…Fuck, I want somebody else’s sometimes. Sometimes I just feel like I’m fighting for a life I just ain’t got time to live. I want it to mean something.
Dr. Saks: It does.

…

Judge: The ninth amendment, does not state that you have the right to be mentally healthy or physically healthy. It does state that you have a right to chose your own medical care; but that is interpreted as medical care that is approved… by the Food and Drug Administration. Regarding the FDA, the court is highly disturbed by its bullying tactics and direct interference with a drug whose own agency has found to be non-toxic. The FDA was formed to protect people, not prevent them from getting help. The law does not seem to make much common sense, sometimes. If a person has been found to be terminally ill… they ought to be able to take just about anything they feel will help…but that is not the law. Mr. Woodroof, I’m moved to compassion by your plight, But, what is lacking here is the legal authority to intervene. I’m sorry. This case is hereby dismissed.

…

Title card: Following the trial, the FDA in Washington allowed Ron to get Peptide T for his own personal use.

Day 2,557.

Ronald Woodroof died of AIDS on September 12, 1992, seven years after he was diagnosed with HIV. A lower dose of AZT became widely used in later drug combinations that saved millions of lives.[/b]

Is this to American slavery what Inglorious Basterds was to the Holocaust? In other words, a kind of fantasy in which we are able to imagine the heroes getting…payback?

Of course the heroes in Basterds weren’t exactly based on a true story. How about here? Is this a reasonably accurate reflection of the way things really were back then on the plantations? In fact that very point has raised some controversial reactions from a few prominent folks in the black community. Spike Lee in particular. Though there are others. And not just about the use of the “N” word. Which, according to IMDb, was used “over 110 times”. The director here being white.

Some accounts of it:

theguardian.com/film/2013/ja … -spike-lee
huffingtonpost.com/jermaine- … 57739.html
cnn.com/2013/01/08/opinion/s … spike-lee/

As for how accurately it portrays slavery, here is an account that focuses in on the mandingo fighting scene:

historybanter.com/did-mandin … ly-happen/

In the film, Lt. Aldo Raine becomes Dr. King Schultz. But it’s not Nazis he despises…it’s slavery. The irony being that in Basterds the actor that plays Schultz here was the Nazi. But they both come off as, well, cartoon characters at times. For Schultz, just think of that fucking tooth flopping back and forth over his wagon.

So, it is sometimes hard to take the “message” here all that seriously. But most folks seem to let this part slide. Why? Because their parts are just so well written and [in the end] we are on their side. Still, there are times when it’s more like watching a situation comedy.

Of course some argue that in portraying how easy it was for these heroes to prevail it just begs the question: why weren’t there more Jews in Germany and black slaves down South willing and able to do this themselves back then.

In a word: scripted.

That’s what these two tales are: wholly scripted. In other words just a bunch of words reconfiguring the world to suit their own purposes.

And it’s not like Django makes this all happen. It’s a white man.

Sound familiar?

And then there’s the part where Schultz refuses to shake Candie’s hand, precipitating a bloodbath. Like something out of Kill Bill. I mean, come on. One fucking handshake? Or am I missing something? Like Candie never having had any intention to let him leave alive? I’m sorry but after that this was just one more shark being jumped in one more Hollywood movie. Indeed, from that point on the ending was [for me] rather ludicrous.

But always remember: It’s Django. The “D” is silent.

IMDb

[b]According to critic Alex Ross, the alliance between Django and Dr. Schultz is “not as absurd” as audiences might believe, because in the 1840s many German revolutionaries and progressives left Europe for the U.S. where they often became active in the anti-slavery movement.

During the filming of one of the dinner scenes, Leonardo DiCaprio had to stop the scene because he was having “a difficult time” using so many racial slurs. Samuel L. Jackson then pulled him aside telling him, “Motherfucker, this is just another Tuesday for us.”

Leonardo DiCaprio, whose role marked the first time he played a villain since The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), was uncomfortable with how horrible and explicitly racist his character was. However, Quentin Tarantino convinced him to be as menacing as possible, saying that if he didn’t take it all the way, people would hold it against him forever.

The US$12,000 paid for Broomhilda’s freedom equates to just over US$318,000 in 2013 dollars. [/b]

faq IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt1853728/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Unchained
trailer: youtu.be/eUdM9vrCbow

[b]Note: Some language might be deemed offensive[/b]

DJANGO UNCHAINED [2012]
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

[b]Schultz [to the slaves]: Now as to you poor devils. So as I see it, when it comes to the subject of what to do next, you gentlemen have two choices. One: once I’m gone, you could lift that beast off the remaining Speck, then carry him to the nearest town. Which would be at least 37 miles back the way you came. Or two: You could unshackle yourselves, take that rifle, put a bullet in his head, bury the two of them deep, and then make your way to a more enlightened area of this country. The choice is yours. Oh, and on the off chance there are any astronomy aficionados amongst you, the North Star is that one.

…

Schultz: What’s everybody staring at?
Django: They ain’t never seen a nigger on a horse before.

…

Django: What kinda dentist are you?
Schultz: I haven’t practiced dentistry in five years - Not to say once I know you better, I wouldn’t like to get a look at that mouth - I’m sure it’s a disaster - But these days I practice a new profession … . Bounty Hunter. Do you know what a Bounty Hunter is?
Django: No.
Schultz: Well the way the slave trade deals in human lives for cash, a bounty hunter, deals in corpses.

…

Schultz: On one hand, I despise slavery. On the other hand, I need your help. If you’re not in a position to refuse, all the better. So, for the time being, I’m gonna make this slavery malarkey work to my benefit. Still, having said that, I feel guilty…So, I would like the two of us to enter into an agreement. I’m looking for the Brittle brothers. However, at this endeavor, I’m at a slight disadvantage insofar as I don’t know what they look like. But you do. Don’t ya?
Django: Oh, I know what they look like, all right.
Schultz: Good. So here’s my agreement: You travel with me until we find them…
Django: Where we goin’?
Schultz: I hear at least two of them are overseeing up in Gatlinburg, but I don’t know where. That means we visit every plantation in Gatlinburg till we find 'em. And when we find them, you point them out, and I kill them. You do that, I agree to give you your freedom; $25 per Brittle brother.

…

Old Man Carrucan: Django… Django… Django… You got sand, Django. Boy’s got sand! I got no use for a nigger with sand.
[he looks to his men]
Old Man Carrucan: I want you to burn a runaway “R” right here on his cheek, and the girl, too. And I want you to take them to the Greenville auction and sell them. Both of them… separately. And this one… you will sell him cheap!

…

Schultz [in disbelief]: Whoa, whoa…let me get this straight: Your slave wife speaks German and her name is Broomhilda von Schaft?
Django: Yep.

…

Big Daddy: Django isn’t a slave. Django is a free man. Do you understand? You’re not to treat him like any of these other niggers around here, cause he ain’t like any of these other niggers around here. Ya got it?
Betina: Ya want I should treat 'em like white folks?
Big Daddy: No that’s not what I said.
Betina: Then I don’t know what’cha want Big Daddy.
Big Daddy [thinking]: Yes, I can see that. What’s the name of that peckawood boy from town works with the glass? His mama works at the lumber yard? He comes by and fixes the winda’s when we have a problem?
Mammy: Oh, you mean Jerry.
Spencer: Yeah, that’s the boy’s name, Jerry. Well that’s it then…just treat 'em like you would Jerry.
Betina: Yes, Big Daddy.

…

Betina: So you’re really free?
Django: Yes.
Betina: You mean, you wanna dress like that ?

…

Schultz [aiming his rifle at fleeing Ellis Brittle]: You sure that’s him?
Django: Yeah.
Schultz: Positive?
Django: I don’t know.
Schultz: You don’t know if you’re positive?
Django: I don’t know what ‘positive’ means.
Schultz: It means you’re sure.
Django: Yes.
Schultz: Yes, what?
Django: Yes, I’m sure that’s Ellis Brittle.
[Schultz shoots Brittle off his horse]
Django: I’m positive he dead.

…

Schultz: How do you like the bounty hunting business?
Django: Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?

…

Django: You want me to play a black slaver? Ain’t nothing lower than a black slaver. A black slaver is lower than the head house nigger…and buddy that’s pretty fucking low.
Schultz: Then play him that way.

…

Candie: I’m curious, what makes you such a mandingo expert?
Django: I’m curious what makes you so curious.

…

Schultz: Well, you won’t sell your best. You won’t even sell your second best, but your third best? You don’t wanna sell either, but if I made you an offer so ridiculous, you’d be forced to consider it? Who knows what could happen?
Candie: And what do you consider “ridiculous?”
Schultz: For a truly talented specimen, the right nigger? How much would you say, Django?
Django: …12,000 dollars.
Candie: Gentleman, you had my curiosity, now you have my attention.

…

Django [playing his role as a black slaver to the hilt]: You niggas gon’ understand something about me! I’m worse than any of these white men here! You get the molasses out your ass, and you keep your goddamn eyeballs off me!

…

Schultz: Point being, don’t get so carried away with your retribution. You lose sight of why we’re here.
Django: You think I lose sight of that?
Schultz: Yes, I do. Stop antagonizing Candie. You’re gonna blow this whole charade, and more than likely get both of us killed. And I, for one, don’t intend to die in Chickasaw County, Mississippi.

…

Candie: Your boss looks a little green around the gills.
Django: He just ain’t used to seein’ a man ripped apart by dogs is all.
Candie: But you are used to it?
Django: I’m just a little more used to Americans than he is

…

Candie: Go fetch Hildi, get her cleaned up and smelling nice and sent over to Dr. Schultz’s room here.
Stephen: Actually, Monsieur Candie, sir, there’s something I ain’t told you about yet. Uh, Hildi in the Hot Box.
Candie: What’s she doing there?
Stephen: What you think she’s doing there. She’s being punished. She run off again. She’s got ten more days to be in there.
Candie: Take her out.
Stephen: Take her out? Why?
Candie: Because I said so, that’s why! Dr. Schultz is my guest. Hildi is my nigger. Southern hospitality dictates I make her available to him.
Stephen: But Monsieur Candie, she run off.
Candie: Christ, Stephen! What is the point of having a nigger that speaks German if you can’t wheel 'em out when you have a German guest? Now I realize it is an inconvenience! Still, you take her ass out.
Stephen: Yes sir.

…

Candie: I think you are a bad loser.
Schultz: And I think you’re an abysmal winner

…

[Candie puts a human skull on the table]
Schultz: Who is your little friend?
Candie: This is Ben. He’s an old Joe that lived around here for a long time. And I do mean a long damn time. Well Ben here took care of my daddy and my daddy’s daddy, till he up and keeled over one day. Old Ben took care of me. Growing up the son of a huge plantation owner in Mississippi puts a white man in contact with a whole lot of black faces. I spent my whole life here right here in Candyland, surrounded by black faces. And seeing them every day, day in day out, I only had one question. Why don’t they kill us? Now right out there on that porch three times a week for fifty years, old Ben here would shave my daddy with a straight razor. Now if I was old Ben, I would have cut my daddy’s goddamn throat, and it wouldn’t have taken me no fifty years to do it neither. But he never did. Why not? You see, the science of phrenology is crucial to understanding the separation about two species. In the skull of the African here, the area associated with submissiveness is larger than any human or other sub-human species on planet Earth. If you examine this piece of skull here, you’ll notice three distinct dimples. Here, here and here. Now if I was holding a skull of a… of an Isaac Newton or Galileo, these three dimples would be in the area of the skull most associated with creativity. But this is the skull of old Ben, and in the skull of old Ben unburdened by genius, these three dimples exist in the area of the skull most associated with servility. Now bright boy, I will admit you are pretty clever. But if I took this hammer here and I bashed it in your skull, you would have the same three dimples in the same place as old Ben.

…

Candie: White cake?
Schultz: I don’t go in for sweets, thank you.
Candie: Are you brooding 'bout me getting the best of ya, huh?
Schultz: Actually, I was thinking of that poor devil you fed to the dogs today, D’Artagnan. And I was wondering what Dumas would make of all this.
Candie: Come again?
Schultz: Alexander Dumas. He wrote “The Three Musketeers.” I figured you must be an admirer. You named your slave after his novel’s lead character. If Alexander Dumas had been there today, I wonder what he would have made of it?
Candie: You doubt he’d approve?
Schultz: Yes. His approval would be a dubious proposition at best.
Candie: Soft hearted Frenchy?
Schultz: Alexander Dumas was black.

…

Schultz [to Django just befire the shutgun blows him away]: Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

…

Billy Crash [after getting shot in the genitals]: D-jango, you black son of a bitch!
Django: The “D” is silent, hillbilly.

…

Stephen: I count six shots, nigger.
Django [pulls out a second revolver]: I count two guns, nigger.

…

Django: You said in seventy-six years on this plantation, you’ve seen all manner of shit done to niggers but I notice…you didn’t mention kneecapping.
[Django shoots Stephen in the kneecap]
Stephen: Oh, God! Motherfucker! Damn it!
Django: Seventy-six years, Stephen. How many niggers you think you seen come and go? Seven thousand? Eight thousand? Nine thousand? Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine? Every single word that came out of Calvin Candie’s mouth was nothing but horseshit, but he was right about one thing: I am that one nigger in ten thousand.
[He shoots Stephen in the other kneecap]
Stephen: Oh, you son of a bitch! Oh, you motherfucker! Oh, sweet Jesus, let me kill this nigger![/b]

This one is all about point of view. And, in particular, about how we come to either trust or not trust others depending on what they are able to make us believe about them. In other words, given the inherent ambiguity embedded in this, everything up on the screen is not necessarily what the audience thinks it is. Reality can become the slipperiest of slopes when you are not in possession of, say, omniscience. And here no one is quite sure what to believe at all. And that’s because no one is quite sure what the others have been told by the third party.

Trick question: How is disappearing different from being kidnapped?

Abduction in the age of modern communication technology. Just snap a picture on your smart phone and email it to the victim’s loved one. Everything can be go back and forth in real time. But everything can also be traced back and forth in real time. A whole new pardigm shift to be grappled with and understood.

But that’s more a digression. A personal observation.

Instead [and as is often the case in films like this], the focus is as much on the power dynamic between the criminals as between them and the victim. Only who is the victim here? It’s not until later that we realize just how much acting is involved here. And who is doing it.

And there must be at least a million things that can go wrong in a crime like this. Or go right from another’s point of view.

And that’s before you get to the part that revolves around human stupidity. And if you watch enough docs on TV you know it’s not just something that shows up in the scripted world either.

Look for the plot to thicken. And then thicken some more.

And one thing for sure: How this finally ends is not quite as any one of them planned. Or predicted.

IMDb

[b]Gemma Arterton refused the use of a body double for her nude scene as she wanted to convey genuine fear. She was given a safe word for her to say if she felt uncomfortable in her nude scenes and wanted filming to stop.

In many ways, the cast and crew found the scene where Gemma Arterton has to urinate into a bottle in front of her captors to be more emotionally bruising than when she was first stripped naked.

Technically, the film should be called “The Kidnapping of Alice Creed”. The current title sits better with the ambiguous ending.

The first time in any film that Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston have kissed another man. Indeed, this is Marsan’s first on-screen kiss at all.

The original ending was much bleaker than the one that ended up in the final film.[/b]

Not hard to guess what that was.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disapp … lice_Creed
trailer: youtu.be/vbeJl3dt0Aw

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED [2009]
Written and directed by J Blakeson

[b]Vic: We need to keep you hydrated. Understand? Just nod if you understand.
[Alice…bound and gagged…nods]
Vic: Now for you to drink, I need to take the gag off. Please, do not scream. We do not want to hurt you. And we certainly don’t want to kill you. But we are absolutely prepared to do either or both of these things if we need to. Do you understand?
[more nods]

…

Alice: I have a daughter…she needs me.
Vic [shoving his hand over her mouth]: Please. We know you don’t have a daughter. We know everything about you. Now I’m sure it’s a natural response, but trying to reason with us is just…
[she bites his hand … he slaps her viciously and puts his hand around her throat]
Vic: Now listen to me. The only people that can get you out of here are him and me. We are your only friends. I urge you to so as we say. Now, are you going to be quiet and drink from the bottle?
[vigorous nods]
Vic: Good.

…

Vic: You haven’t eaten in nine hours after doing physical work…and your still not Hungry?
Danny: No.
Vic: If you’re not hungry it means that something’s not right. It means you’re thinking too much about whether we’ve done everything right or whether we’ve made a mistake along the way that’ll get us caught and get us 20 years in jail. Or maybe you’re thinking about whether we have to rough that girl up…or perhaps even kill her. Or worse, maybe you are getting semi-fucking-mental, now that this girl isn’t just theoretical. Now, you’ve looked into her eyes, maybe you’re having second thoughts. Maybe your conscience is easting away at your conviction. And maybe you’re persuading yourself that the best thing to do is just go in there, untie her and let her go. Now you listen to me: FUCK THAT!!! FUCK! THAT!

…

Alice [to Danny]: I can’t shit with you watching me!

…

Danny: Please. Alice, please. It’s Danny! It’s me, Danny!!

…

Danny: There’s a plan.
Alice: A plan? Fuck, Danny. Just get me the fuck out of here.
Danny: I will, okay? Just listen to me first. We’re getting some money from your dad. A lot of money. You hate your dad. You hate him, Alice. He cut you off. He’s got all that fucking money. Now he’s never going to give you any more of it. We’ve always talked about a way to get his money off him. Well, this is it, Alice. This is how we get his money.
Alice: But you fucking kidnapped me!! You fucking stripped me naked. You made me piss in a fucking bottle in front of…who? Who the fuck is the other man? Do I know him too?

…

Danny: Vic is no one. I met him on the inside. He doesn’t know.
Alice: Know what?
Danny: About us. He thinks you’re just a random rich girl. He’s not got the whole picture. He thinks all this is his plan. He doesn’t suspect that we’ll keep all the money. Me and you.

…

Alice: Why the fuck didn’t you ask me first?! I thought I was going to fucking die in here. I was fucking terrified!
Danny: I know, I know. I’m sorry, right? But it had to look real, feel real…for Vic, for you.
Alice: Look real?! You can’t fucking do that to someone, Danny. You can’t make them think that they’re going to fucking die!
Danny: You can’t fake fear, Alice – not proper fear. He would have seen that you were pretending. He would have known.

…

Danny: He’s going to pay 2 million pounds. In Cash. And all you have to do is lie in that bed.
Alice: Tied up, humiliated, abused.
Danny: It’ll only be for another day or so. Not much to ask for 2 million pounds.

…

Alice: Don’t let him hurt me. Promise.
Danny: I promise.

…

Alice: But he could just take the money and disappear.
Danny: I know he wouldn’t?
Alice: How can you be sure?
Danny: I just am. Trust me.

…

Danny: But we had a plan!
Alice; No, you had a plan. This is my plan.

…

Danny: Alice, please, you can’t do this. I love you.
Alice: No, Danny. When you love someone, you do everything you can to take care of them. What you don’t do is kidnap them, understand? You don’t fuckimg jump them in the street and put them in the back of a fucking van. You don’t put a fucking knife to their throat!

…

Vic [to Alice]: WHO FIRED THE GUN?!!

…

Alice [to Vic]: Fuck him, right?

…

Vic: Danny, let me ask you something. Why did you choose her?

…

Danny: But what if we don’t make it back? She’ll be stuck here. She’ll die.
Vic: So? If we don’t make it back, why do you care if she don’t make it?
[long pause]
Danny: I don’t care.

…

Danny: The hole. The hole was for the money.
Vic: No. This hole’s for you, Danny. They didn’t fuck up. You did. You killed her Danny. You not only killed yourself but you killed her too.

…

Danny [to Alice]: You should have listened…[/b]

Based on a true story: the writer/director’s own. Roughly as it were.

In which the question is asked: Where the fuck do we fit into all of this…this…this stuff. And to which the answer seems to revolve [to me] around just how teeny and tiny and infinitesimally insignificant we must actually be. In, say, the context of “all there is”.

Actually, when it comes to flesh and blood human beings, it’s more like the trees of life. In that no two are ever exactly the same. Just as a weeping willow is not an oak is not a pine is not a banyon is not a palm.

Still, just as a tree is a tree is a tree so we as a species all share certain traits in common. Just don’t go thinking that if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And given that the trees on the tree of life don’t have brains or personalities or character traits or a sense of self, by the time the tree evolved into us all bets were off.

Bottom line: The “tree of life” can never really be anything other than an expression we use to encompass life at its broadest point…in its broadest sense.

So, right off the bat: In exploring all of the Big Questions that can either perplex or plague us the film narrows the beam down considerably to one particular family living in one particular time and place. We see ourselves in them and/or we don’t. But one thing’s for sure: we can only take out of them what we are first able to put into them: dasein. Thus what some might construe to be profound insights from the characters others will only construe to be the hackneyed bromides of, say, the filmmaker.

And into all of this [almost inevitably] are thrown God and religion:

Mrs. O’Brien [voiceover]: Lord, Why? Where were you? Did you know what happened? Do you care?

Young Jack [voiceover]: Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good…when you aren’t.

And all that Book of Job shit again.

And this all unfolds in the 1950s. A whole other world in some respects. And in Texas no less.

What’s it all nean? Well, let’s start here:

Some American theaters set up signs - warning moviegoers about the enigmatic and non-linear narrative of the movie - following some confused walkouts and refund demands in the opening weeks. IMDb

Can you even begin to imagine your “typical American” watching this?!!

Anyway, it sure is beautiful to look at. In part, like watching a National Geographic Special. In part, like watching Koyaanisqatsi.

And look for the cold and the calculating ravages of capitalism to poke its nose in from time to time. Hey, we’re all expendable. And the endless debate about “how to parent”: More like mother – a nurturing love? Or more like father – a tough love? Who really does know “best”?

IMDb

[b]Dissatisfied by the look of modern computer generated visual effects, director Terrence Malick approached veteran special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, who was responsible for the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), to create the visual effects for the film using bygone optical and practical methods.

In August 2011, Sean Penn gave an interview to the French publication “Le Figaro” in which he was very critical of the movie and Terrence Malick’s direction. Penn said “I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context. What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.”

Emmanuel Lubezki explained Terrence Malick’s approach to film by saying “Photography is not used to illustrate dialogue or a performance” but instead is used “to capture emotion so that the movie is very experiential”. So the film, with Lubezki’s own words, is “meant to trigger tons of memories, like a scent or a perfume”.

The butterfly that landed on Mrs. O’Brien’s (Jessica Chastain) hands was not CG but a real one. One morning while both Chastain and Brad Pitt were rehearsing, Terrence Malick spotted it flying around. He got the crew and Chastain following it three blocks of Smithville, then got her to step into the middle of a street and hold her hand up.

The tree of life that appears in the film is a gargantuan 65000-pound live-oak tree situated at Smithville, Texas.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0478304/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film
trailer: youtu.be/WXRYA1dxP_0

THE TREE OF LIFE [2011]
Written and directed Terrence Malick

[b]Title card: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?..When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 28: 4,7

…

Mrs. O’Brien [voiceover]: The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.[/b]

Got that? In other words, blessed are those who can delude themselves into reducing their own life down to platitudes like these. After all, what else is there when the telegrams arrive?

[b]Father Haynes: He is in God’s hands, now.
Mrs. O’Brien: He was in God’s hands the whole time. Wasn’t he?

…

Grandmother [trying to console her daughter]: Life goes on. People pass along. Nothing stays the same. You still got the other two. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. That’s just the way he is. He sends flies to wounds that he should heal.

…

Jack [voiceover as an adult]: When you’re young it’s all about your career. You don’t understand anything. I just feel like I’m bumping into walls. The world’s gone to the dogs…and getting worse.

…

Mrs. O’brien [to God]: Did you know? Who are we to you? Answer me.

…

Mr. O’Brien [to his sons]: Your mother’s naive. It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world. If you’re good, people take advantage of you. Every one of these top executives…you want to know how they got where they are?

…

Preacher: Job imagined he might build his nest on high…that the integrity of his behavior would protect him against misfortune. And his friends thought, mistakenly, that the Lord could only have punished him because secretly he’s done something wrong. But no. Misfortune befalls the good as well. We can’t protect ourselves against it. We can’t protect our children. We can’t say to ourselvres, ‘Even if I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure they are’. We run before the wind. We think it will carry us forever. It will not. We vanish as a cloud. We wither as the autumn grass. And like a tree, are rooted up. Is there something everlasting in the scheme of the universe? Is there nothing which is deathless…nothing which does not pass away? We cannot stay where we are. We must journey forth. We must find that which is greater than fortune or fate. Nothing can bring us peace but that.[/b]

Cue God and immortality and Salvation.

Mr. O’brien [to his family]: Frank Johnson. He owns half the real estate in town. He started out as a barber. But he built something big. Now you’d think he’s the fourth person in the Holy Trinity. They never talk about their money. The wrong people go hungry…die. The wrong people get loved. The world lives by trickery. If you want to succeed you can’t be too good.

This sermon after the family has left church. Having heard about the travails of Job.

[b]Young Jack [voiceover…about his father]: He says, ‘Don’t put your elbows on the table’. He does. He insults people. Doesn’t care.

…

Mr. O’Brien [to his son]: Toscanini once recorded a piece sixty five times. You know what he said when he finished? “It could be better.” Think about it.

…

Young Jack [voiceover]: What have I started? What have I done?

…

Mr. O’Brien: You are not to call me “Dad”. You will only call me “Father”.
Young Jack: But…
Mr. O’Brien: Don’t interrupt!
Young Jack: But you do…
Mr. O’Brien: Don’t interrupt!
Young Jack: It’s your house. You can kick me out whenever you want to. You’d like to kill me.

…

Young Jack [voiceover]: What I want to do, I can’t do. I do what I hate.

…

Young Jack [voiceover]: I didn’t know how to name you then. But I see it was you. Always you were calling me.

…

Mrs. O’Brien: Come here!
Young Jack: NO! I’m gonna do what I want to do. You let him walk all over you.

…

Mr. O’Brien [voiceover]: I wanted to be loved because I was great. A big man. I’m nothing. Look at the glory around us; trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn’t notice the glory. I’m a foolish man.[/b]

To wit:

[b]Mr. O’Brien [to Mrs O’Brien]: They’re closing the plant. I was given this choice: no job or transfer to a job nobody wants.
[he pauses…reflecting]
Mr. O’Brien: I never missed a day of work. I always tithed on Sunday.

…

Mrs. O’Brien [voiceover]: I give him to you. I give you my son. [/b]

For some, it’s hard [really hard] to wrap their head around the idea of a woman paying a man for sex. It’s like it goes entirely against the laws of nature. And it’s not like you see it very often in films. For every American Gigolo there must be at least a thousand films in which the man pays the woman. You know, the way it’s supposed to be.

And when these laws of nature are reversed it is almost always the case that the woman is very, very wealthy and the man is very, very handsome. You wonder: is this some sort of a genetic thing?

On the other hand, whether it’s the man paying the woman or the woman paying the man, there are the folks in the background. The families and the loved ones of those either giving or receiving.

After all, there are any number of reasons why someone might choose to become a prostitute. And the folks in the background can cover lots and lots of terriotory. In other words, the pain inflicted can go in any number of directions.

Here the man chooses to to play the skin game because his career as an esteemed novelist is going nowhere fast – but he still has a wife and a kid to support. He needs the dough in other words.

But what makes this all the more problematic is the part about love. One couple has an open marriage…and the other couple does not. With one ouple everything is all out in the open. Not so with the other.

And then there’s the part about growing old…about death: Tobias: All my organs turned against me. Those little bastards!

James Coburn plays the character in the film who is dying. The year after the film came out he did. In reality.

Too bad about the ending though. Too many sharks to count.

Look for that guy from the Rolling Stones.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_fr … ian_Fields
trailer: youtu.be/UKD-eNyW7Ao

THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELD [2001]
Directed by George Hickenlooper

[b]Luther [voiceover]: Pasadena, home to little old ladies, noble laureates… high tech science, beautiful museums… and a Pulitzer Prize winner or two. Welcome to a city where people still read.

…

Customer [at the remainder bin]: Did you write this book?
Byron: It only took 7 years out of my life…but don’t let that influence you.

…

Luther [voiceover]: This is the story of Byron Tiller…a modest man living in a modest Pasadena neighborhood. A neighborhood built for middle income families… when the middle was still closer to the top than the bottom.

…

Byron: I sold a book today.
Dena: Hey, that’s good!
Byron: I haven’t done the math, but I think it’ll bring us another 3 cents. Course the taxes will kill us.

…

Luther [voiceover]: Tucked neatly between the Hollywood porn shops, novelty shops…and Scientology shops…crammed in amongst the recording studios whose heyday had long past… the unproduced screenwriters whose deals had long lapsed…the bad actors teaching methods on emoting to other bad actors who dream of one day passing an audition…sat Byron Tiller, who until recently believed writing novels…no one wanted to read was a real job.

…

Luther [voiceover]: Goals have a way of becoming less high-minded when you need money.

…

Editor: Excalibur must be great. Everyone wanna kill each other just to get it.
Byron: It’s the sword that King Arthur himself pulled out of the rock.
Editor: I know the back story. It just seems a little out of place in a novel about migrant workers.
Byron: Well, Excalibur represents a symbol. It represents to me the downtrodden’s hopes and dreams for the future. And the migrant workers are simply a microcosm.
Editor: Aren’t they always? See…that’s where we have a problem. I’ll tell you a little secret about microcosms – people hate them. Think about it. Who’d sit on a bus to read a book saying you’re part of a microcosm? Already knows it. He looks around and he knows. Symbolism’s worse. Poor bastard picks up a book, he wants it spelled out. No one wants to waste their time looking for deeper meaning.
Byron: My wife thinks it’s the best thing I ever wrote.
Editor: She must love you very much.

…

Editor [handing back Byron’s manuscript]: Maybe next time.

…

Byron: Could I get an advance?
Editor: On what? You know I’d like to, but…
Byron: Virgil, I know that my problems are not your problems but I got nothing left to live on.
Editor: Are you really that desperate?
Byron: Yes.
Editor: Then use that emotion. All of the best novels are written in desperation.
Byron: So are the best suicide notes. [/b]

Enter the man from Elysian Fields.

[b]Luther: Don’t you think you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill?
Byron: The problem is that my mountain has shrunk into a mole hill. And unless you have family of moles how do you live?
Luther: A man can always support his family if he’s willing to do the necessary.

…

Byron: Paul Pearson! I thought it was you. Good to see you.
Paul: Good to see you. Things going well since you left us?
Byron: Yes, great. I’ve just had my first novel published.
Paul: So I hear. Been meaning to read it, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
Byron: Right. So, how’s the office? -You know advertising. I miss it. The action, the deadlines. There’s a hell of an adrenaline rush there. I’d even consider getting back in under the right circumstances.
Paul: You told me to go fuck myself.
Byron: That was the adrenaline talking.
Paul: You’d really be willing to come back? Salary’d be smaller, accounts would be shit.
Byron: Whatever you decide.
Paul: Well, that’s a good attitude. Why didn’t you have it before?
Byron: Well, I’ve grown up a little.
Paul: I’m very glad to hear it.
Byron: Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning?
Paul: Actually, I think it’d be better if you just go fuck yourself. [/b]

Ouch.

Dena’s father: If you write the Goddamned Iliad who knows if anyone’s going to buy it. Take your last book. Nice little review on the “Times”…meant nothing, right?
Byron: In that neighborhood.
Dena’s father: What kind of business is that?
Byron: Ask what Gutenberg was thinking.
Dena’s father: I don’t give a damn what Gutenberg was thinking. Let’s cut the bullshit. You need money, right?
Byron: Just a loan.
Dena’s father: I’ve given the matter a lot of thought…and I won’t lend you the money.
Byron: Why?
Dena’s father: What was it Shakespeare said? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”.
Byron: Look, I’m only here because I promised your daughter I would meet you…and stick my tongue up your ass. I guess my work here is done.
Dena’s father [as Byron turns and walks away]: We both know you’ll never be able to support your family. Think about it!

I think Byron is now desparate enough to “do the necessary”.

[b]Byron: So, what is it? What kind of business is it that you’re in?
Luther: Elysian Fields is an escort service.
Byron: An escort service. So what you’re saying is you sort of…you know, stand on a street corner and put on a cowboy hat?
Luther: No. We’re not hustlers. We tend to the wounds of lonely women in need of emotional as well as spiritual solace.
Byron: Women.
Luther: Often only as friendship.
Byron: Only women?
Luther: Call me old-fashioned.

…

Byron: And this is the job that you thought I would be right for?
Luther: Well, you’re handsome, well-educated, and compassionate.
Byron: How do you know I’m compassionate?
Luther: Remember, I’m the one who read your novel. Compassion was its best strength. Even if the premise was shit.
Byron: If you would’ve read the fly leaf, you’d have noticed I’m married and have a kid.
Luther: All the better. A family at home prevents any unnecessary entanglements…with the clientele.
Byron: Look, I’m not trying to sit on top of any moral high ground but this business you’re in, doesn’t it make you a little bit ashamed?
Luther: No. Poverty does that.

…

Luther: How much body hair do you have?
Byron: What?
Luther: How much body hair do you have?
Byron: Body hair? Why?
Luther: With the amount they pay, they can afford to be particular.

…

Luther: Andrea Allcott, 35 years old. Charismatic. Face of an angel. You should have a lot in common. Her husband’s a novelist, too. Just like you. You may have heard of him. Tobias Allcott.
Byron: Tobias Allcott, the Pulitzer Prize winner?
Luther: Yeah, well, actually, I think he’s won three.

…

Nigel: You ever done this kind of work before? It’s like rolling off a log. Just don’t roll off until they finish.
Byron: Well, Luther actually said that they don’t all necessarily want to…to…
Nigel: Right. Right. You’ll get used to it. It’s when they want you to hold them afterwards, as if it meant something. That’s when you realize it’s all bullshit. But what business isn’t? Could be selling used cars. At least we give them their money’s worth. But don’t worry, Byron. You’ll be fine. All these rich bitches want is some companionship…and sex. We’re like cocker spaniels with hard-ons.
Byron: I’ll keep that image in mind.

…

Luther [voiceover]: Everyone is nervous the first time. It was important for Byron to meet someone beautiful. Someone like Andrea Allcott, who, indeed had the face of an angel. And it wasn’t just her face. Plastic surgeons make money to buy yachts for rearranging nature… in a more pleasing way. No, this wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill angel. This one, I’m sure…God handled himself.

…

Luther [to Byron]: I don’t know why they call them outstanding checks…as if not being paid is somehow a good thing.

…

Byron: Are you surprised I’m a writer?
Andrea: Actually, no. You’re not the sort of man who’d be satisfied taking lonely women around.
Byron: Oh, so you are lonely.
Andrea: There’s nothing lonelier than watching the man you love slowly die.
Byron: “Death. The only immortal… who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge… are for all.”
Andrea: Very beautiful.
Byron: Mark Twain.
Andrea: The reality is less poetic.

…

Andrea: Mr. Allcott wants you to bring him his breakfast.
Byron: Me? Why?
Andrea: Well, it’ll come up in conversation.

…

Byron: What is the main theme you actually wanted to write the book about?
Tobias: That every social structure makes slaves out of one group or another.
Byron: That’s terrific! So what do you need Roman slaves for?
Tobias: What’s wrong with them?
Byron: Nobody can identify with them. Prove that instead with another oppressed group. There’s enough to pick from. This could be the greatest novel that you ever wrote.
Tobias: I already thought it was.
Byron: You just gotta get rid of the Roman slaves and find yourself another…microcosm. Tobias: Blacks? Jews? Homosexuals?
[to each Byron shakes his head no]
Tobias: Who, then?!
Byron: Migrant workers.

…

Byron [to Dena]: Do you think that I enjoy having to do it this way? How many chances happen in a lifetime? lf there is one, grab it. Even if you hate everything that comes with it! And I hate this! I hate it! But I’m doing it for you! I’m doing it for Nathaniel!

…

Tobias [to Byron]: Be careful of women who love you just the way you are - it’s a sure sign they settle too easily.

…

Tobias: Byron. Wait a minute. If it would make you feel any better…I’ve already begun to have chest pains.

…

Byron: You know, when a man is concerned with taking care of his family, his priorities can get all scrambled. But it has nothing to do with love.
Client: For what I’m paying you, I expect you to be on my side in everything.

…

Nigel: Who are you with?
Byron: Norma Van Reuten, of San Marino.
Nigel: Christ! She’s the one who likes having her toes sucked. Just some advice…make it easy on yourself. Do not take her dancing first, okay?

…

Dena: What makes a man do what you do?
Nigel: I think of our mission as a way of giving joy to others, my darling.
Dena: Actually, I, um, I really need to know the truth.
Nigel: Well, its simple. Fucking is the last resort for a man who feals impotent. [/b]

Objectivists with guns. Lots of them. And Kids too. Or close enough.

You can almost imagine this being based on a true story. Just as you can almost imagine it happening still today. Some no doubt would like it to. And not just at a military academy where kids play at being soldiers. Some I suspect would very much like it if the entire military apparatus would collectively get up, go to the windows, open them, stick their heads out and yell, ‘we’re as mad as hell and we’re not gonna take this anymore!’

Then the country could be yanked back to the 1950s, and all the fucking troublmakers would be silenced once and for all. Brutally if necessary.

Duty. Honor. Country. And God of course.

Authoritarian right down to the bone. Though some are considerably more fanatic about it than others.

And, really, unless you have actually been in the military [and I was] you cannot even begin to grasp just how anal some of them can be about having a rule for every fucking thing that you think, feel and do.

The irony here is that capitalism and the military industrial complex are [in many important respects] just two different ways of saying the same thing. But these particular capitalists want to tear the military academy down in order to build [what else] condominiums.

Sean Penn’s first feature film. Tom Cruise’s second.

IMDb

Prior to the production of the film, the key actors -Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and others - were required to participate in a 45-day-long period of orientation with the students of Valley Forge Military Academy. They were given uniforms, borrowed from their real life counterparts at the school and given authentic military haircuts. They slept in campus barracks and were subjected to the same rigors and hardship that all Valley Forge cadets went through. While most of the actors enjoyed and excelled at their orientation, Cruise opted to leave the training for the comforts of a nearby hotel until filming began.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taps_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ob2DIURBXts

TAPS [1981]
Directed by Harold Becker

[b]General Bache: Was I scared! I must have lost 20 pounds, all of it brown.

…

General Bache: But fear has a way of providing you with a little bonus. It gives you…the wolf.
Cadet: The wolf?
General: It’s a quotation from Theodore Roosevelt. Let me see. “All men who have felt the power of the joy of battle know what it’s like when the wolf rises in the heart.”[/b]

Oorah!

General Bache: I tell you what. Let’s drink to the one thing that never changes. To the one permanent part of a man’s life.
Cadet: What’s that, sir?
Brian: Honour.
General: Honour, indeed. Burglarproof, foolproof, weatherproof. 100% proof. Honour. Everything else is subject to the powers that be, dependent upon the caprices of often inferior men. But your honour is your own, inviolate.

On the other hand, you have to be honorable about the right things.

[b]General Bache: Ladies and gentlemen, for 141 years, old soldiers like myself have stood here on this day and told the finest of America’s young men the meaning of the word “commencement”. It is a beginning, we told them. But today, this day, it has another meaning, an end. An end to nearly a century and a half of tradition and an end to the heart of us. I have been informed that Bunker Hill Academy is to be closed, all of its buildings torn down, nothing to be left…but memories. It is the decision of the board of trustees in their wisdom that this institution be sold and the land developed for its real estate potential.

…

Brian: Sir, how could they do this?
General Bache: With the stroke of a pen, sir. Their field of honor was a desktop.[/b]

That and a really big bank account.

[b]General Bache: I came to Bunker Hill when I was 12 years old. Just like you. With the exception of those years, I’ve been in uniform all my life. I know men younger than myself who take their pensions and put on stupid little white shirts with cut-off sleeves, alligator on the tit, and spend the rest of their days beating the hell out of a little white ball with an iron club. My God! The thought of it makes me want to puke.
Brian: They like it like that, civilians.
General [bitterly]: Well, the one thing civilians know is their rights. And they’re within their rights to push us out to make way for their goddamned condominiums.

…

General Bache: But we have one little advantage on them.
Brian: What’s that, sir?
General: We’re here. And the condos aren’t. We have a foothold. You boys are my purpose. You’re my family. And I’m not going to let them take you away from me.
Brian: We won’t either, sir. We won’t let them.

…

Alex [to Brian]: The guy’s a maniac.
David: Damn right I am. I Saw my duty and I did it!

…

Brian: When my mother died I was sitting in the hallway in the army hospital. I was worried as hell. I knew she was real sick. She had this bad kidney thing. So I’m sitting there and my father comes out of the room and tells me that she’s dead. He led me to this little chapel they had there and he sat me down and he told me I could cry for 15 minutes. He gave me 15 minutes to cry and after that I wasn’t supposed to cry again. So he left me alone in the chapel and came back… he came back 15 minutes later.
Alex: Jesus. What did you do?
Brian: Well, I did what I was told. I cried for 15 minutes.

…

Sergeant Moreland [Brian’s father]: Let me tell 'em it was growing pains - the wrong execution of the right idea.
Brian: “The wrong execution of the right idea”?!

…

Sergeant Moreland: You’re not thinking straight. You have a bad way to lose a pretty bright future, kid.
Brian: Stop calling me kid.
Sergeant Moreland: You expect me to call you Major? You can forget it. Look at this operation. You got your strength nose to nose with the cops. Eventually even they’ll figure out you’ve got a vulnerable rear flank and they’ll sneak in. There, by the field, behind the trees, and they’ll throw a net over your pink little asses.
Brian: You can say that…
Sergeant Moreland: The first canister of tear gas, half your troops’ll wet their pants and run. And how bright was it to let this delegation in here? Look at me. I could break your neck and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.
Brian: You’d be shot. My next in command would take over. We could take you all as hostages, but we won’t. We have a code of honour.
Sergeant Moreland: Sweet Jesus! Is that what this is all about? Somebody’s lofty shit about honour? Yours?!

…

Brian: Alex, you’ve been picking at this from the beginning. What’s wrong with you? Things are going beautifully. We’re in better shape now. Now we’re a corps. General Bache used to talk about men under pressure. How they act as one. We’re seeing it.
Alex: Thus spake Saint Bache? Look, he’s only a man, Brian. Like your father, my father. Just a man. Not every word out of his mouth is some holy nugget.
Brian: Right. Whatever you say.
Alex: Don’t let that display of loyalty go to your head. It won’t mean beans to anybody out there. They’ll say it was brainwashing. Maybe they’re right.

…

Colonel Kerby: I’m urging them to take into consideration your youth and the strain…
Brian: Cut the bullshit. Nobody in here’s young any more.
Colonel Kerby: Excuse me if I don’t shed tears over your lost youth. You’ve had your chances to toss it in. You’ve got this chance. The governor is this close to ordering us to take you in by force. When that order comes, I’ll do it and you won’t ever be that unhappy again. I’ll have to do it.
Brian: I know what they want us to do. They want us to be good little boys now so we can fight some war for them in the future. Some war they’ll decide on. We’d rather fight our own war right now.

…

Colonel Kerby: Brian, we’re talking about boys so young they haven’t got hair one between their legs.
Brian: That’s never been a qualification for a soldier. The final stage of any mobilisation is the children, the seed corn.
Colonel Kerby: Good Christ! What in God’s name did they teach you in here? What did they turn you into?
Brian: A soldier. The only thing I ever wanted to be.
Colonel Kerby: You’re not a soldier! I’m a soldier, with the career goal of all soldiers - staying alive in situations where it ain’t all that easy to do! But you my friend…you’re a death-lover. Oh, I know the species. Seventeen years old and some sorry son-of-a-bitch has put you in love with death. Somebody sold you on the idea that dying for a cause is oh, so romantic. Well, that’s the worst kind of all the kinds of bullshit there is! Dying is only one thing: bad.[/b]

Right. I’m sure that’s the pep talk the boys going to Iraq and Afghanistan heard.

Native Americans. The classic context in which to roll out the “liberal” and the “conservative” political narratives.

Here we are on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Modern day Native Americans in a “realistic” portrayal of life on the reservation. What is now left of a once proud people who were stripped of their land, their culture, their very identity. A virtual genocide steeped in racism…in the ravages of exploition and oppression.

Is it any wonder that they live as they now do? And can anyone really see them as anything other thing the tragic victims that they are?

Nonsense the conservatives insist. Manifest Destiny was rooted in the one true God – and in the Enlightened narrative of the civilized world. And whatever the past we all come into this world today with the same opportunities for success. Thus each individual is responsible for the choices that he or she makes. To blame “society” for making you a “victim” is precisely the mentality that sustains your decrepit state.

Your choice.

And this is truly a bleak spectacle. A bleak place to live. A bleak place to die. And what do most of us really know about experiencing it day in and day out? One thing never changes though: American Youth. This and the mumbo jumbo that is religion. Well, and death of course.

Talk about a vicious cycle.

As for the ending: Let’s talk about the futility of symbolic gestures.

Look for Mogie wearing his Madonna [Like A Virgin] tee-shirt. Hey, talk about speaking volumes. On the other hand, he does love that woman.

Based on actual events. Well, it is if you believe this:

Director Chris Eyre claims that all of the events portrayed in the movie are drawn from stories he read about in local papers over the years. IMDb

IMDb

[b]No set embellishment was allowed. Eyre wanted to show the actual conditions. It was shot in 23 days entirely on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Eric Schweig wanted to perform the role to show that in the midst of America, this location was akin to a Third World nation, as it is the poorest county in the United States.

Despite everyone’s discomfort, Greene allowed the wake scene to be shot with him in an open coffin and also allowed the coffin to be shut on him and wheeled away. The next day everyone went to the football field, said a prayer and burned the coffin. Eyre says, ‘‘It’s not stuff you want to mess with’’.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_(film
trailer: youtu.be/RT_q5QoMV7I

SKINS [2002]
Directed by Chris Eyre

[b]News reporter: 40% of residents here live in sub-standard houses. The $2600 annual earnings are the lowest in the nation. 75% unemployment. Alcoholism is nine times the national average. Life expectancy here is 15 years less than most Americans.

…

Rudy [to his brother Mogie]: Help! Help! A black widow spider bit my nuts!

…

Rudy: What’s wrong Mogie, you don’t say hi anymore?
Mogie: I don’t talk to Indians.

…

Rudy [to Mogie]: There’s free beer…

…

Rudy: I think Mogie’s mind short-circuted in Vietnam. Such a freak show over there.
Stella: He got wounded, right?
Rudy: Three purple hearts. Idiot awards he called them. He hocked the for wine money.

…

News reporter: This is the first of a three part series on the Oglala Sioux. Tonight’s subject is the multimillion dollar liquor business generated in this small town of White Plain, Nebraska. Some accuse these white liquor store owners of being bloodsuckers who earn a living off of Indian misery.
Indian girl being interviewed: They all drink, they all do drugs. That’s becasue it is hard to live down here on Pine Ridge. There’s just not anything here.
News reporter: Indians drinking beer and cheap wine…that sad cliche is brought to stark reality on Friday nights…payday for the Indians on the Pine Ridge reservation. They flood the border towns like this one to buy alcohol which is outlawed on their reservation.

…

[Rudy is watching the local news on the TV]
News reporter: And you, sir, what do you believe the government out to be doing to help the people on the reservation?
Mogie [obviously drunk]: I’d like the great white father in Washington to send me a big woman…a big fat woman. I’d sleep with her and she’d cover up all the cracks in my shack and stop the wind from blowing though. Hey, you want to see me piss my pants!

…

Rudy: Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! Fuck you you stupid motherfucker! FUCK!

…

Rudy: What were you doing up on that roof?
Mogie: Trying to steal some booze. What do you think I was doing?

…

Rudy [looking at Mogie’s scarred hand]: That’s not all I did…

…

Mogie: Well, maybe there is one thing you can do for me.
Rudy: What?
Mogie: Help me blow the nose off George Washington at Mount Rushmore.

…

Rudy: I hear they’re building a new liquor store.
Cashier: You heard right. The owner is making a killing from the insurance. The new store is going to be twice as big as the old. And with two drive-thru windows.
Rudy [sarcastically]: Just what we need.[/b]

Hey, the more things change, right?

It’s hard to believe but there are still folks actively involved in the political process who call themselves idealists. They actually believe the rhetoric will be translated into reality – if only they can get the candidate elected. After all, look at all of the fools who bought into Barack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In” bullshit.

And some of them are so in denial that they still believe it! It’s just more examples of the “psychology of objectivism”. And diehard idealists are almost always the last to succumb. To the reality of political economy, in other words. If some ever do.

After all, isn’t George Clooney still a big Obama booster? So, is he just naive? Or does he simply support him as the best of all possible worlds given the alternative: the reactionaries on the right?

Here’s the thing though: Clooney exposes [going all the way back to Mr Smith Goes to Washington] Hollywood’s rendition of the jaded, cynical opportunists in American politics. Then he’ll host a dinner for Barack Obama who, in his own way, is smack dab in the middle of all this!

Is Clooney himself just another starfucker then?

The narrative here nudges us from time to time in the general direction of crony capitalism but the primary focus is on “character”…on “personal integrity”. The “good guy” fucks around on his wife and is basically amoral when push comes to shove. Think John Edwards. Sure, so is the other guy no doubt but it always comes down to who is better able to take advantage of it. To control the “spin” in other words. It’s a game by and large. And that seems to be the bottom line here: Taking us behind the curtain and exposing it all as more or less a staged production. And this is possible by and large is because you are dealing with an electorate that just loves to play along. In other words, they are not qualified themselves to go much beyond it.

Listen for Rachel Maddow. And Dave Matthews. And Charlie Rose. The corporate media. Well, the “lean forward” gang anyway. Though Rose is all Bilderberg: youtu.be/jP6l39I47QA

IMDb

[b]The Ides of March was the day (March 15) that Julius Caesar was assassinated. In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” before being stabbed to death, Caesar is told by a Soothsayer: “Beware the ides of March.”

After watching Morris stating on a video that extremism cannot be faced with more extremism and that America should understand why its enemies behave as such, Ryan Gosling’s character mockingly says “Hello, my name is Neville Chamberlain and I’d like to be your Commander-in-chief”. This is a reference to the attitude of the British Prime Minister who, before World War II, blindly believed he could negotiate with Hitler towards peace, with disastrous consequences. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ides_of_March_(film
trailer: youtu.be/pV-50ay79mk

THE IDES OF MARCH [2011]
Written in part and directed by George Clooney

Stephen [rehearsing Morris’s stump speech]: “I’m not a Christian. I’m not an Atheist. I’m not Jewish. I’m not Muslim. My religion, what I believe in is called the Constitution of United States of America.”

Oh, he’s an idealist alright. But let’s see how that fares by the end of the film

[b]Man with sign along the campaign trail: WILL VOTE FOR FOOD

…

Tom: You know, I’m trying to remember if the Democrats have ever nominated an atheist before.
Paul: Well, we know they’ve nominated a jackass before.

…

Ida: I love Paul. You, I hate.
Stephen: You love him because he gives you the scoops.
Ida: Sexual favors.
Stephen: You’re engaged.
Ida: If it meant a good scoop, my fiance would understand.

…

Ida [to Stephen]: You really buy into all this crap. All this “take back the country” nonsense.

…

Stephen: Mike Morris is president, it says more about us than it does about him. I don’t give a fuck, if he can win. He has to win.
Ida: Or what? What? The world’s gonna fall apart? It won’t matter, not one bit, to the everyday lives or the everyday fuckers who get up, and work, and eat, and sleep, go back to work again. You know, if your boy wins, you get a job in the White House. He loses, you’re back at a consulting firm on the K Street. That’s it. You used to know that before you got all goosebumpy about this guy. Mike Morris is a politician. He’s a nice guy. They’re all nice guys. But he will let you down, sooner or later.[/b]

Ida, in other words, is the cynical reporter. The cynical liberal reporter. The Times in other words.

[b]Tom: You exude something. You draw people in. All the reporters love you. Even the ones that hate you love you. 'Cause you play them like the pieces on a chessboard and make it look effortless. And we both know how hard it is constantly being on guard, weighing every word, every move. But from the outside, you make it look easy. People are scared of you. 'cause they don’t understand how you do it, and they love you for it. And that is the most valuable thing in this business. The ability to win people’s respect by making them mistake their fear for love. You can guess what I’m gonna say next.
Stephen: I don’t think that l can.
Tom: I want you to work for us.

…

Stephen: But I don’t have to play dirty anymore. You know why? I got Morris.
Tom: No, no, none of this is about the democratic process, Steve. It’s about getting your guy off.
Stephen: This is the shit Republicans pull.
Tom: Yeah, you know what? This is the kind of shit that the Republicans pull, and it’s about time we learned from them. They’re meaner, they’re tougher, they’re more disciplined than we are. I’ve been in this business 25 years and I’ve seen way too many Democrats bite the dust because they wouldn’t get down in the mud with the fucking elephants.
Stepen: Paul’s my friend.
Tom: You Wanna work for the friend or do you wanna work for the president?

…

Stephen: Were gonna be fine. We have to do it, it’s the right thing to do and nothing bad happens when your doing the right thing.
Morris: Is this your personal theory? 'Cause I can shoot holes in it.
Stephen: Well there’s exceptions to every rule.

…

Stephen: Governor, there’s a big difference between Paul and me. Paul only believes in winning, so he’ll do or say anything to win.
Morris: But you wouldn’t.
Stephen: I’ll do or say anything if l believe in it. But I have to believe in the cause.
Morris: You’ll make a lousy consultant when you’re out of this line of work.
Stephen: Well, l won’t be out of this line of work as long as you’re in it, sir.
Morris: So at best, you got eight years. Then you end up at a nice consultant firm off Farragut North, making 750 grand a year, eating at The Palm, pimping out ex-senators to Saudi princes.
Stephen: Pimping out ex-presidents.
Morris: Then I better win.

…

Morris [on the campaign trail]: The richest people in this country don’t pay their fair share. And when they’re asked to, they cry socialism. They use phrases like “redistribution of wealth.” Yeah. That scares everybody, and they all run and they hide. For the record, my campaign is vehemently against the distribution of wealth to the richest Americans by our government.[/b]

See? Just like Obama on the campaign trail. Oh, how I would love to be the fly on the wall listening to Clooney and Obama discuss that now.

[b]Stephen: Why is Paul calling you right now?
Molly: I called him first.
Stephen: Why?
Molly: Because I didn’t know who else to go to. And l needed 900 bucks.
Stephen:For what?
Molly: I can’t go to my dad. We’re Catholic.

…

Stephen: Molly, you gotta wake the fuck up. This is the big leagues. lt’s mean. When you make a mistake, you lose the right to play.[/b]

As he himself will soon learn. Well, briefly.

[b]Tom: You know, if this had been a clean break, if you had left Morris before the story broke, that’d be one thing that, we could control. But like this? Paul fires you, and then you wanna come work for me? It makes me look like I’m picking up the scraps. It puts Morris in the driver’s seat. I can’t have that.
Stephen: What if I had something big?
Tom: Like what?
Stephen: Something big.

…

Stephen: Give me the job.
Tom: No, that’s not gonna happen. I’m sorry. Go take a nice long vacation. You’re a smart guy. Everything that I said the other day is absolutely true. But, you know, maybe politics isn’t for you.
Stephen: Politics is my life.
Tom: Do yourself a favor. Get out, now. While you still can. Go into entertainment or business, go open a fucking restaurant in Costa Rica. Anything. Do something that’s gonna make you happy, okay? Cause you stay in this business long enough, you’re going to get jaded and cynical.
Stephen: Like you?
Tom: Yeah, just like me!

…

Stephen: As of tomorrow, there’s gonna be a few changes to your campaign. Paul’s out. I’m your senior campaign manager. I’ll draft a statement. “The campaign got to a point where we needed to make changes.” You can put your own words in there.
Morris: Why would l do that?
Stephen: Because you wanna win. Because you broke the only rule in politics. If you want to be president, you can start a war, you can lie, you can cheat, you can bankrupt the country, but you can’t fuck the interns. They’ll get you for that.

…

Paul: Well, one day we’ll grab a beer and you can tell me what you had on the governor that put me out.
Stephen: How do you know I didn’t have something on you?

…

Ida: Come on, Stephen. Aren’t we friends anymore?
Stephen: You’re my best friend, Ida.

…

Morris [at the Demcratic convention]: Senator Thompson, l am proud that you have brought integrity back to this election. Because that’s what this is all about – integrity. Because who we are matters. Because how we project ourselves to the world matters. Dignity matters. lntegrity matters. Our future depends on it.[/b]

Oh how I would love to sit down with Barack Obama and discuss this film.

See, I told you: life is existetntial. And it is only to the extent you grasp the implications of this that you grasp in turn the experiential parameters of identity.

You live your life in a certain way and you come to think of yourself in a certain way. You come to value some things more than others becasue those are the things in your life that you have come into contact with. You don’t value other things because you have never encountered experiences that brought them into focus.

Then something truly out of the ordinary happens and you find yourself in an entirely new context. The way you once thought about yourself [and those things that you value] have considerably less relevance here. And thus in order to adapt you find yourself [and the things you value] changing.

In other words, this is one of those Before/After experiences. The very heart and the very soul of dasein at times.

Of course there must have been experiences in my own life that predisposed me to think like this in turn. One in particular: Vietnam.

I may not have been “cast away” when they sent me to that MACV in Song Be, but upon my return to “the world” I was not was even really remotely the same.

Here the pivotal point revolves literally around being cast out of the world of human interaction itself. Chuck Noland finds himself utterly alone on an island. A plane crash. And though no man is an island he comes as close as we are ever likely to being one. And lots of things begin to change. Take for example how comes to think about…time?

If nothing else, you can use this as a “how to” guide. You know, in case it ever happens to you.

See if you can spot the product placements.

IMDb

[b]To make himself look like an average out of shape middle aged man Tom Hanks didn’t exercise and allowed himself to grow pudgy. Production was then halted for a year so he could lose fifty pounds and grow out his hair for his time spent on the deserted island.

Some crew members were left on the island for a few days to survive and learn some skills. They used some of their survival techniques in the movie for the character of Chuck. They were: having trouble lighting a fire, opening a coconut, talking to a volleyball, collecting packages washed up on the beach, and catching fish.

Actual lines of dialogue were written for Wilson the Volleyball, to help Hanks have a more natural interaction with the inanimate object.

One of the three volleyballs used in the film was sold in an auction for $18,400. [/b]

FAQ at IMDb imdb.com/title/tt0162222/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_Away
trailer: youtu.be/PJvosb4UCLs

CAST AWAY [2000]
Directed by Robert Zemeckis

[b]Chuck: Time rules over us without mercy, not caring if we’re healthy or ill, hungry or drunk, Russian, American, beings from Mars. It’s like a fire. It could either destroy us or keep us warm. That’s why every FedEx office has a clock. Because we live or we die by the clock. We never turn our back on it. And we never, ever allow ourselves the sin of losing track of time!

…

Chuck [pulling something out of a Fed-Ex box]: It is a clock, which I started at absolute zero…and is now at 87 hours. From Memphis, America to Nicolai in Russia, 87 hours. Eighty-seven hours is a shameful outrage. This is just an egg timer! What if it had been something else? Like your paycheck? Or fresh boysenberries? Or adoption papers? Eighty-seven hours is an eternity. The cosmos was created in less time! Wars have been fought and nations toppled in 87 hours! Fortunes made and squandered![/b]

Works that way in Moscow too. And in “the shadow of Lenin’s Tomb” no less.

[b]Chuck: First thing it’s two minutes late, then four, then six, then the next thing you know, we’re the U.S. mail.

…

Kelly: What about our Christmas? I got a gift for you.
Chuck: We have to do it in the car.

…

Chuck [to Kelly]: I’ll be right back!

…

Chuck [after burying Albert]: So, that’s it.

…

Chuck [to Wilson]: You wouldn’t have a match by any chance would you?

…

Chuck: I did it! I did it! FIRE!!!

…

Chuck [to Wilson]:You gotta love crab. In the nick of time too. I couldn’t take much more of those coconuts. Coconut milk is a natural laxative. That’s something Gilligan never told us.

…

Chuck [to Wilson]: We might just make it. Did that thought ever cross your brain? Well, regardless, I would rather take my chance out there on the ocean than to stay here and die on this shithole island, spending the rest of my life talking…TO A GODDAMN VOLLEYBALL!

…

Stan: Well, here’s the drill. Um, plane pulls in, we get off, and there’s a little ceremony right there in the hangar. Fred Smith will say a few words. All you have to do is smile and say “thank you.” Then we’ll take you over to see Kelly.
Chuck: She’s actually gonna be there, huh?
Stan: Well, that’s what we have arranged. I mean, ifyou’re sure you wanna do that.
Chuck: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. I don’t know what I’m gonna say to her. What in the world am I gonna say to her?
Stan: Chuck, Kelly had to let you go. You know? She thought you were dead. And we buried you. We had a funeral and a coffin and a gravestone. The whole thing.
Chuck: You had a coffin? What was in it?

…

Jerry [to Chuck]: Kelly wanted…Kelly wanted to be here. Look, this is very hard for everyone. I can’t even imagine how hard it is for you. Kelly, uh-- She’s had it rough. First when she thought she lost you, and now dealing with all of this. It’s…it’s confusing. It’s very emotional for her. She’s…She’s sort of lost. Maybe you could just give her a little more time.

…

Chuck: So, let me get one thing straight here…We have a pro football team now, but they’re in Nashville?

…

Chuck [to Kelly]: I should’ve never gotten on that plane. I should’ve never gotten out of the car.

…

Kelly [to Chuck]: You said you’d be right back…

…

Chuck [to Stan]: We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had lost her…'cause I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing. And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I’m back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass…And I’ve lost her all over again. I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly. But I’m so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring? [/b]

Yep. That just about sums it all up. Well, one possible configuration of it.

Bettina: You look lost.
Chuck: I do?
Bettina: Where’re you headed?
Chuck: Well, I was just about to figure that out.
Bettina: Well, that’s 83 South. And this road here will hook you up with I-40 East. If you turn right, that’ll take you to Amarillo, Flagstaff, California. And if you head back that direction, you’ll find a whole lot of nothing all the way to Canada.
Chuck: I got it.
Bettina: All right, then. Good luck, cowboy.
Chuck: Thank you.

When you are a dictator you sometimes get to say what is and is not true. And, for some, even who does and does not exist. Here the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, makes his first wife and their son virtually disappear from history. Consider:

Most Italians had no idea that Mussolini had a first wife and child until a documentary broke the story on TV in 2005.
IMDb

And while he went on to become this infamous fascist dictator, she ended up in an insane asylum. As did her son. Forcibly. Of course [at times] she does seem to be rather…delusional. At least about the future.

So, how accurate is the portrayal here? Well, let’s just say that [per wiki] “…part political treatise, part melodrama, Marco Bellocchio’s Mussolini biopic forsakes historical details in favor of absorbing emotion…”

How you react to this will depend in part on how familiar you are with the historical events that it unfolds in. And, of course, which side you would have been on. Each side insisting [it goes without saying], “History will prove I’m right!”

But it is only when we attempt to fit folks and facts like this into the vastness of “all there is” that we can find ourselves particularly stumped. Or I know I do.

Of course Mussolini was said by some [and is still said by others today] to embody nihilism: a murky, ever turbulent intertwining of religion, atheism, socialism, capitalism, anarchism, nationalism and…and “revolutionary” violence.

What could be clearer? Once God is dead.

If nothing else it shows how passion in bed can be inextricably linked with political passion — especially at a time in history when the world itself convulses. And how historically “great men” have used up and then discarded women time and time again.

IMDb

In Italian, “vincere” means “to win”. This was a favorite word in Il Duce’s public speeches.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincere
trailer: youtu.be/XeaRJxJcp7E

VINCERE [2009]
Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio

Mussolini: I challenge God! I’ll give Him five minutes to strike me dead. If He does not, it will be the proof He doesn’t exist. I’m ready…
[five minutes pass]
Mussolini: Time’s up, God doesn’t exist.

Time instead to invent a new religion : Fascism.

[b]Mussolini [in a speech]: We want justice on earth, here, now! There can be no victory without action, rebellion, violence. Help me! No warring between peoples! Long live the Republic, long live Socialism!

…

[at meeting of the Worker’s Party]
Man: You listen too, Benito. Proletarians don’t want this war, they don’t want to get killed for the middle-class. They think war is suicide. It’s peace that gives bread.
Mussolini: This war will kill all wars.
Man in audience: Middle-class slave! In July you said “down with war”.
Mussolini: I’ve changed my mind! Only mules never change paths. Besides, the middle-class doesn’t like my interventionism, they growl, accusing me of recklessness, they’re scared the armed proletarians will turn against them. This war, in which Italy must absolutely not remain neutral, will turn the wheel of history with its blood. It will be a revolutionary war.
Man: Peace is revolutionary!
Mussolini: Don’t forget Blanqui: “Who has iron, has bread”!

…

On flyers thrown in the street: WAR: THE WORLD’S ONLY HYGIENE!

…

Mussolini: In my youth I wanted to be a musician or an author. But I knew I’d be mediocre and I’m terrified of time passing.
Ida: You’re the editor of Avanti, you should be satisfied.
Mussolini: I’ll never be satisfied, never! I have to climb higher. I feel it my duty to be different from all who accept their mediocrity. The army of the virtuous can’t even imagine how this society can be changed, revolutionized, moving beyond morality. That morality is my destiny.

…

Mussolini [to Ida]: Luck goes past each man’s door at least once. You must open the door to welcome it, at that very moment.

…

Mussolini: Ida? What happened?
Ida: I sold everything.
Mussolini: What do you mean?
Ida: I sold everything. The apartment, the shop, the furniture, the jewelry. For your newspaper.

…

[Mussolini takes part in an ideology brawl:]
Long live Italy!
Long live war!
War!
Peace!
War is the world’s only hygiene!
Peace is the only solution!
Shut up, draft-dodger!
!Depart Italian soil!
Long live neutrality!
long live Socialism!
Long live the poor!
You cowards, we’re far more Socialist than you!
We’re ready to die for Italy!
Italy wants to go to war!
Italy wants peace.!
You sold out to Germany and Austria!
You sold out to France!
Italy’s starving!
You Judas!
Long live the working class!
You’re all clowns!
You’re corrupt!

[then the inevitable brawl]

…
Rachel [the second wife]: Why are you here? Go home, you spy!
Ida: I’m his wife.
Rachel: What? You brazen hussy! I’m his wife.
[she looks down at Mussolini[
Rachel: Nothing to say?
Mussolini: Be quiet.
Rachel: Tell her I’m your wife.
Ida: Don’t forget your son, don’t abandon us!
Mussolini: Get out!
Ida: Don’t abandon us!!

…

Ida [with her son outside Mussolini’s residence]: Come outside, you thief! You’ve abandoned your wife and son to the deepest poverty! I’ve written to the Pope, the Prime Minister, the Court of Milan, to the editor of Il Corriere della Sera! So they’ll send you to prison. You thief! You thief! You thief!

…

Ida [with a gun, to her son]: Benito, there’s just one shot here, it’s for your father’s heart.

…

Patient [next to Ida in the insane asylum]: No, stay down or they’ll put you in a straight jacket. You’re beautiful. Is it true you’re Il Duce’s wife? How does Il Duce screw?

…

Doctor: You attack, you leap from the trenches and attack. I’ve been in war too, but there were two armies slaughtering each other with matched weapons. You though, are alone against everyone: Carabinieri, militia, army, the Royal Guards… Too many. So you’re wrong to holler the truth. Not that the truth shouldn’t be hollered! But it’s the manner, the method, the timing that’s not right. This is the time to be quiet, to be actors.

…

Doctor: I’m a physician, I treat patients. Have you ever heard me say: “Down with Il Duce”? Today, not always, we must be great actors. But the character you must play to save yourself is not a rebel in constant agitation, but a normal woman, a housewife, obedient, remissive, taciturn, a lover of order. The Fascist woman who knows her place is in the home.

…

Ida: But if I die, who’ll remember us? If no one listens, I have to holler.
Doctor: Why should you die? You’re young, healthy, beautiful. Why think about the past and not look to the future, the present?
Ida: What future? The man I adored and gave everything to, has erased me, like I’d never existed, a ghost. Not even a ghost!
Doctor: You’re here, we’re talking. Do you think Fascism will last forever? I want to release you, give me a little time, immediately would be dangerous. Meantime, go to church, confess, read Pascoli, memorize it, the Mother Superior adores him. The Church is the only mother Fascism still fears.

…

Tutle Card: IDA DALSER DIED ON DECEMBER 3, 1937 FROM CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE. SHE WAS BURIED IN A COMMON GRAVE. HER MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE TO MUSSOLINI HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. BENITO ALBINO DIED AT 26 IN A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL. LIKE HIS MOTHER HE WAS BURIED IN A COMMON GRAVE. ON APRIL 25, 1945 ITALY WAS LIBERATED FROM FASCISM. ON APRIL 28, 1945 MUSSOLINI WAS EXECUTED BY THE PARTISANS.[/b]

Men and women. Love and Lust. That goes as far back into human history as anything can possibly go.

But these relationships…evolve. Especially within the context of “Western Civilization”.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from The Magus:

We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did.

It is from the same author who wrote the novel the film below is based on.

Here though we go back even further in time. The “rules of behavior” will overlap in some respect…but not in others. In particular, the options afforded women over the course of this historical span.

And that is basically the conceit here. A film is being made about the relationships between men and women in the 19th century…while exploring the relationship between the actors playing those characters in the 20th century. The point being [perhaps] that not nearly as much has changed at all. Except for the parts that clearly have.

But the reality of class is always a constant it seems. If there is an upstairs, there will be a downstairs. As there will in turn be the murky labyrinths into which human psychology can take us. In other words, getting “inside the head” of another. Trying so fitfully, futilely to grasp “reality” as he or she does.

Here though the focus is only on a particular culture – England. So the extent any of this is relevant to the historical evolution of relationships in other cultures is necessarily problematic.

IMDb

[b]The original novel does not feature the subplot of the actors playing the parts in a modern day film. The novel did, however, feature three alternate ending from which readers could choose their favorite. Creating two parallel story lines allowed the filmmakers to include two of those endings, one happy and one tragic.

The Cobb is the old harbor wall at Lyme Regis where we see “that scene” as Sarah / Anna stands on the harbor wall as the waves crash around her. It was deemed too dangerous for Meryl to get up onto the Cobb while the waves were crashing. So any distance shots actually have one of the art directors standing in for her. The close ups were done in the safety of the studio.

The role of Charles was first offered to James Fox, then returning to acting after a decade working for an Evangelical Christian movement. He turned the part down “for moral reasons”.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French … oman_(film
trailer: youtu.be/zTO1wDxAAxc

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN [1981]
Directed by Karel Reisz

[b]The Vicar: Miss Woodruff! You know you cannot stay here any longer. Miss Duff has made no provision for you in her will. The cottage is to be sold. How much money do you possess? Miss Woodruff, I think I know someone who might take you in. Mrs Poulteney from the Grange. Sarah: Does her house overlook the sea?
The Vicar: Yes, it does, yes.

…

Charles: Oh, yes, he was very respectful of what he called my position as a scientist and a gentleman. In fact, he asked me about my work. But as I didn’t think that fossils were quite in his line I gave him a brief discourse on the theory of evolution instead.
Ernestina: How wicked of you!
Charles: Yes, he didn’t think very much of it. In fact he ventured the opinion that Mr Darwin should be exhibited in a cage in the zoological gardens. In the monkey house.

…

Charles: Good Lord! What on earth is she doing?
Ernestina: Oh. It’s poor “Tragedy”.
Charles: “Tragedy”?
Ernestina: The fishermen have a grosser name for her.
Charles: What?
Ernestina: They call her “the French lieutenant’s…woman”.

…

Charles: Tell me, who is this… French lieutenant?
Ernestina: He is a man she’s said to have…
Charles: Fallen in love with?
Ernestina: Worse than that.
Charles: Ah. And he abandoned her. Is there a child?
Ernestina: I think not. Oh, it’s all gossip.
Charles: What’s she doing here?
Ernestina: They say she’s waiting for him to return.
Charles: How banal.

…

Mrs Poulteney: You stand on the Cobb and look to sea. I’m led to believe that you’re in a state of repentance but I must emphasise that such staring out to sea is provocative, intolerable and sinful.
Sarah: If you consider me unsuitable for this position do you wish me to leave the house?
Mrs Poulteney: I wish you to show that this person is expunged from your heart!
Sarah: How am I to show it?
Mrs Poulteney: By not exhibiting your shame!

…

Anna [reading from a book] Mike, listen to this. In 1857, it’s estimated there were 80,000 prostitutes in the county of London.
Mike: Yeah?
Anna: Out of every 60 houses, one was a brothel.
Mike: Hoo, hoo, hoo.
Anna: At a time when the male population of London of all ages was one and a quarter million, the prostitutes were receiving clients at a rate of two million per week.
Mike: Two million?

…

Anna [of her character Sarah]: Well, that’s what she’s really faced with. This man says that hundreds of the prostitutes were nice girls, like governesses, who’d lost their jobs. You offend your boss, you lose your job, you’re out on the streets. That’s the reality.
Mike: The male population was one and a quarter million?
Anna: Yeah.
Mike [doing calculations on paper]: Well, if we take away a third for children and old men that means that, outside of marriage your Victorian gentleman could look forward to 2.4 fucks a week!

…

Charles: Permit me to insist. These things are like wounds. If no one dares speak of them, they fester. If he doesn’t return he was not worthy of you. If he returns…
Sarah: He will never return.
Charles: You fear he will never return?
Sarah: I know he will never return.
Charles: I do not take your meaning.
Sarah: He is married.

…

Charles: Why don’t you go to London, make a new life?
Sarah: If I went to London, I know what I should become. I should become what some already call me in Lyme.
Charles: My dear Miss Woodruff…
Sarah: I am weak. How should I not know it? I have sinned. You cannot imagine my suffering. My only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins. Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman?
Charles: That question were better not asked. Envy is…
Sarah: Not envy! Incomprehension.

…

Charles: Palaeontology is my interest. I gather it is not yours.
Doctor: When we know more of the living, it will be time to pursue the dead.
Charles: Yes, I was introduced the other day to a specimen of the local flora that rather inclines me to agree with you. A very strange case, as I understand it. Her name is Woodruff.
Doctor: Ah, yes. Poor “Tragedy”. We know more about your fossils on the beach than we do about that girl’s mind.

…

Doctor [to Charles]: A German doctor called Hartmann has divided melancholia into various types. One he calls “natural”, by which he means that one is born with a…a sad temperament. Another he calls “occasional” by which he means springing from an occasion. And the third class he calls “obscure melancholia” by which he really means, poor man, he doesn’t know what the devil caused it.

…

Doctor: I was called in to see her, oh, ten months ago. She was working as a seamstress, living by herself. Well, hardly living. Weeping without reason, unable to sleep, unable to talk. Melancholia as plain as the pox. I could see there was only one cure. To get her away from this place. But no, she wouldn’t have it. She goes to a house that she knows is a living misery…to a mistress that sees no difference between a servant and a slave. And she will not be moved.
Charles: But it’s…incomprehensible.
Doctor: Not at all. Hartmann has something very interesting to say about one of his patients: “It was as if her torture had become her delight.”

…

Sarah [of the French Lieutenant to Charles]: He seemed overjoyed to see me. He…he was all that a lover should be. I had not eaten that day. He took me to a private sitting room, ordered food. But…he had changed. He was full of smiles and caresses, but I knew at once that he was insincere. I saw that I had been an amusement for him. Nothing more. I saw all this within five minutes of our meeting. Yet I stayed. Soon he no longer bothered to hide the nature of his intensions towards me. Nor could I pretend surprise. My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. I could tell you that he overpowered me, he drugged me. But it was not so I gave myself to him. I did it so that I should never be the same again…so that I should be seen for the outcast I am! I knew it was ordained that I should never marry an equal, so I married shame.

…

Sarah [to Charles]: It is my shame that has kept me alive…my knowing that I am truly not like other women. I…I shall never, like them, have children and a husband and the pleasures of a home. Sometimes I pity them. I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame, can touch me. I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing. I am… hardly human any more. I am the French lieutenant’s…whore!

…

Charles: I was…the first?
Sarah: Yes.
Charles: Why did you lie about the Frenchman?
Sarah: I don’t know.
Charles: Does he even exist?
Sarah: Oh, yes, he exists. I did follow him to Weymouth, to the inn. As I drew near I saw him come out with a woman. The kind of woman one…cannot mistake. When they had gone, I… walked away.
Charles: But then why did you tell…
Sarah: I don’t know. I cannot explain.

…

Sarah: Do what you will. Or what you must. Now that I know there was truly a day upon which you loved me, I can bear anything.

…

Ernestina [to Charles]: You are a liar! My father will drag your name, both your names, through the mire! You will be spurned and detested by all that know you! You will be hounded out of England!

…

Mr. Grimes [detective]: Now, Mr Smithson, I shan’t pretend to you that it’s going to be an easy task. But I have four good men, and they’ll go on the job at once. We’ll try the educational boards of all the church schools. We shall also investigate these new female clerical agencies. And we shall investigate all the girls’ academies in London. I shall also be examining the Register of Deaths.
Charles: Very good. Try everything, Mr Grimes.
Mr Grimes: One last question, sir, for the moment. Does the lady wish to be found, would you say, or not?

…

Attorney reading from a legal document]: I, Charles Henry Smithson, solely by my desire to declare the truth, admit that one: I contracted to marry Miss Ernestina Freeman. Two: I was given no cause whatsoever to break my solemn contract. Three: I was fully and exactly apprised of her rank in society, her character, marriage portion and future prospects before my engagement to her hand. Four: I did break that contract without any justification whatsoever beyond my own criminal selfishness and lust. Five: I entered into a clandestine liaison with a person named Sarah Woodruff. Six: My conduct throughout this matter has been dishonourable. By it I have for ever forfeited the right to be considered a gentleman.

…

Telegraph from the detective [three years later]: SHE IS FOUND UNDER NAME MRS. ROUGHWOOD.

…

Charles: My solicitor was told you lived at this address. I do not know by whom.
Sarah: By me.

…

Charles: Are you saying that you never loved me?
Sarah: I could not say that.
Charles: But you must say that! You must say “I am totally evil. I used him as an instrument. I do not care that in all this time he hasn’t seen a woman to compare with me…that his life has been a desert without me…that he sacrificed everything for me.” Say it![/b]

A battle of wits. That’s how many described the “historic encounter” between Richard Nixon and David Frost.

But something is either witty or not depending on how you react to it, say, politically. If you agree with the point being made it is deemed profound, and if not it can be seen as anything but profound. Even, perhaps, as complete bullshit.

And that is presuming the discussion itself focuses in on the things that you feel are the most important aspects of the Nixon presidency.

Watergate? Many saw this “scandal” as but a trivial pursuit next to the real crimes of this administration. Instead, they focus in on the direct historical link between the “secret government” that Nixon installed [operation cointelpro, operation chaos etc.]…the Iran Contra scandal that enveloped the Reagan administration…the draconian post 9/11 agenda pursued by the Bush/Cheney administration…and all the way up to the sort of things now being exposed by folks like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

I watched this film looking for this particular narrative. In other words, the extent to which Nixon came to embody America being run as a “national security state”; and one deeply intertwined in the military industrial complex, the war economy and the corporate media.

Here though the focus is clearly less on that and more on the manner in which we get to explore Richard Nixon’s “psyche”. The beam is always focused on Nixon "the man". The so-called “drama” revolving around whether or not Frost is able to “nail” him. To expose him. A clash of “personalities”, as it were. That’s where the “drama” is said to be.

In other words, what Frost asked or how Nixon answered was almost incidental. What really counted was who had “won” each round. Who had managed to pin the other to the mat by outfoxing him. The idea then was to “rope the dope”. And at first it appeared that Nixon was all but thumping Frost. Could Frost come back? That was where the “drama” resided here: Would Frost finally “get” him?

Thus the most important factor here [by far] was in getting Tricky Dick Nixon to at last admit that, yes, he did know about the coverup right from the beginning. That he was a crook. That he did put the nation “through two years of needless agony”. That only then could he and the nation ever achieve, uh, closure.

IMDb

[b]Even while off-camera, all of the actors would remain in character and continue the Frost/Nixon rivalry by bickering and making fun of each other.

Both Frank Langella and Michael Sheen repeat the roles they created on stage. Ron Howard would only agree to direct if the studio would allow both actors to appear in the film version.

In an article called ‘Stopping the Rot’ in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) on May 3, 2008, Ian Munro quoted James Reston Jr., Frost’s Watergate adviser: ‘I was in army intelligence … and the Mutt and Jeff, good cop-bad cop thing is usually two people, but Frost, he did both roles.’[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost/Nixon_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ibxs_2nDXUc

FROST/NIXON [2008]
Directed by Ron Howard

[b]Jack Brennan: I remember his face. Staring out the window. Down below him, a liberal America cheered, gloated. Hippies, draft dodgers, dilettantes, the same people who’d spit on me when I got back from Vietnam. They’d gotten rid of Richard Nixon, their bogeyman.

…

Birt: So who is it?
Frost: Richard Nixon.
Birt [laughing]: Richard Nixon?!
Frost: Well, come on, don’t look like that.
Birt: Well, how would you expect me to look? I spent yesterday evening watching you interview the Bee Gees.
Frost: Weren’t they terrific?

…

Birt: So, okay, so what kind of interview?
Frost: A full, extensive look-back over his life, his presidency.
Birt: And?
Frost: And what?
Birt: Come on, David. Surely the only thing that would interest anyone about Richard Nixon would be a confession. A full, no-holds-barred confession.
Frost: Well, we’ll get that, too.
Birt: From Richard Nixon?
Frost: Come on, John. Just think of the numbers it would get. Do you know how many people watched his farewell speech in the White House? Four hundred million.[/b]

You know, just to put it all in perspective.

[b]Swifty Lazar: I got $500,000.
Nixon: Is that good?
Swifty Lazar: Mr. President, it’s a half a million dollars for a news interview. It’s unprecedented.
Nixon: Yeah? Well, what’s the catch?
Swifty Lazar: With Frost? None. It’ll be a big wet kiss. This guy’ll be so grateful to be getting it at all, he’ll pitch puffballs all night and pay a half a million dollars for the privilege.
Nixon: Well, you think you could get 550?
Swifty Lazar [to the camera] : I got 6.

…

Birt: David, how could you have done that? $600,000. That’s a fortune. My God. Most Americans think he belongs in jail. You’re making him a rich man. Plus, by outbidding them, you’ve already made enemies of the networks.
Frost: They’re just jealous.
Birt: They’re already sounding off about checkbook journalism. And if the networks are against you, syndication’s always going to be a struggle. No syndication, no advance sales. No advance sales, no commercials. No commercials, no revenue.[/b]

Again, just to put it all in perspective.

[b]Frost: You were never part of the show in New York, but it’s indescribable. Success in America is unlike success anywhere else. And the emptiness when it’s gone. And the sickening thought that it may never come back. You know, there’s a restaurant in New York called Sardi’s. Ordinary mortals can’t get a table. John, the place was my canteen! Birt: You know, I’d be happier if I heard some kind of vision that you had for this interview.

…

Nixon: You know, it’s a funny thing that I’ve never been challenged to a duel before. I guess that’s what this is.
Frost: Yeah, well, not really.
Nixon: Of course it is. And I like that. No holds barred, eh? No holds barred.

…

Nixon: I bet you it did.
Brennan: What?
Nixon: Come out of his own pocket. You know, he couldn’t look me in the eye.
Brennan: Well, I hear the networks aren’t biting. Without the networks, the ad agencies don’t want to know. So if you ask me, there’s a good chance this whole thing may never happen.
Nixon: Really? So that meeting we just had might have cost him $200,000?
Brennan: Correct.
Nixon: Had I known that, I would have offered him a cup of tea.

…

James Reston Jr.: You know right now, I submit it’s impossible to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon. He devalued the presidency, and he left the country that elected him in trauma. The American people need a conviction, pure and simple. The integrity of our political system, of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it.[/b]

This is the classic “love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal” approach to Watergate. Barely scratching the surface in terms of exposing the nature of “the sytem” Nixon embodied in the White House.

[b]Brennan: We start taping at the end of March.
Nixon: Really? Now, that’s terrific. How much time is devoted to Watergate?
Brennan: 25%. Just one of four 90-minute shows.
Nixon: What are the other three divided into?
Brennan: Domestic Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Nixon the Man.
Nixon: “Nixon the Man”? As opposed to what? Nixon the horse?

…

Zelnick [impersonating Nixon, discussing Jack Kennedy]: That man, he screwed anything that moved, fixed elections, and took us into Vietnam. And the American people, they loved him for it! Whereas I, Richard Milhous Nixon, worked around the clock in their service, and they hated me! Look. Look. Now I’m sweating. Damn it! Damn it! And Kennedy’s so goddamn handsome and blue-eyed! Had women all over him! He screwed anything that moved, and everything. Had a go at Checkers once. The poor little bitch was never the same!

…

[Reston has swore to Zelnick earlier he would never shake Nixon’s hand]
Nixon [extending his hand to Reston]: Pleasure to meet you.
Reston [after a pause, he shakily extends his own hand]: Mr. President…
Zelnick [after Nixon leaves]: Oh that was devastating, withering. I don’t think he’s ever going to get over that.
Reston: Fuck off.

…

Brennan [voiceover]: Well, in boxing, you know, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab. It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost’s face. If he didn’t know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President’s first answer.

…

Zelnick[ after the disasterous first segment]: David, we have some fundamental problems in our approach that I think…
Frost: Don’t worry, Bob. I’m on it. We can use some of the Kissinger stuff.
Zelnick: Yeah, but we need to discuss it sooner rather than later…
Frost: Look, I’m disappointed, too. But I wonder, could we possibly spare the post-mortem for now? I don’t mean to minimize it. It’s just I’ve got to get back to LA to meet some people from Weed Eater. Thanks, everyone! Great work! I’ll see you soon. God bless!
Zelnick: What the hell is Weed Eater?
Birt: It’s a horticultural mechanism. One of our sponsors.
Reston: What happened to Xerox? What about General Motors or IBM?
Birt: I gather that not all of the blue-chip accounts came through. We do have Alpo.
Reston: Dog food?

…

Zelnick: Are we close, John?
Birt: I believe we’re at 30%.
Reston: To go? Or 30% sold?
Birt: Sold, 30% sold.
Reston: Jesus…
Zelnick: I thought we were practically fully financed.
Birt: We were. But the financing was always conditional on advertising sales, and no one predicted that they’d fall apart like this.
Zelnick: Well, why have they fallen apart? Based on what?
Reston: Credibility of the project. What else are advertising sales based on?

…

Birt: Listen, I understand your concern. But could I ask you to go a little easier on David over the next couple of days, bearing in mind the extraordinary pressure that he’s under? 'Cause at the moment, he’s effectively paying for all this himself. So he’s in it for a lot more than just his reputation.
Zelnick: And we’re not?

…

Birt [to Frost]: Look, I’m serious. You have got to make it more uncomfortable for him. You can start by sitting forward. You’ve gotta attack more. If he starts tailing off, bang, jump in with another question. Don’t trade generalizations. Be specific. And above all, don’t let him give these self-serving, 23-minute homilies. Right. And keep your distance before the tape starts running. He was toying with you yesterday. All that shit about Ben-Hur and struggling to raise the money. Those are mind games. Don’t engage. Never forget, you are in there with a major operator.

…

Frost: But one of the principal justifications you gave for the incursion was the supposed existence of the “headquarters of the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam,” a sort of “bamboo Pentagon” which proved not to exist at all.
Nixon: No, no. Wait a minute there. No, I was…
Frost: And by sending… And by sending B-52s to carpet bomb a country, wiping out whole civilian areas, you end up radicalizing a once moderate people, uniting them in anti-American sentiment and creating a monster in the Khmer Rouge that would lead to civil war…

…

Nixon: Whenever I have had my doubts I remembered the construction worker in Philadelphia because he came up to me and he said ‘Sir I got only one criticism of that Cambodia thing; if you’d gone in earlier you might’ve captured the gun that killed my boy three months ago’. So you’re asking me do I regret going into Cambodia?.. No, I don’t. You know what, I wish I’d gone in sooner. And harder![/b]

Workers of the world unite!

[b]Frost: What’s next?
Birt: Foreign policy.
[Frost leaves the room…but hears their reaction]
Zelnick: Great. Russia, China, the big power stuff.
Birt: Yeah, so?
Zelnick: So if Nixon beats him up like that on Vietnam, imagine what he’s gonna do with his real achievements.
Reston: It ain’t going to be pretty.

…

Zelnick: What “revolution,” David? You just let Richard Nixon claim the country was in a state of revolution? What, with protestors “bombing” and “assaulting” police officers? That’s not how I remember it. What I remember is people protesting peacefully and legitimately against the Vietnam War! That’s what I remember.
Reston: By the end, wiretapping students and breaking into journalists’ homes was beginning to sound like a rational response.

…

Nixon [on the phone]: That’s our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us.
Frost: I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nixon: Yes you do. Now come on. No matter how many awards or column inches are written about you, or how high the elected office is, it’s still not enough. We still feel like the little man. The loser. They told us we were a hundred times, the smart asses in college, the high ups. The well-born. The people who’s respect we really wanted. Really craved. And isn’t that why we work so hard now, why we fight for every inch? Scrambling our way up in undignified fashion. If we’re honest for a minute, if we reflect privately, just for a moment, if we allow ourselves a glimpse into that shadowy place we call our soul, isn’t that why we’re here? Now? The two of us. Looking for a way back into the sun. Into the limelight. Back onto the winner’s podium. Because we can feel it slipping away. We were headed, both of us, for the dirt. The place the snobs always told us that we’d end up. Face in the dust, humiliated all the more for having tried. So pitifully hard. Well, to hell with that! We’re not going to let that happen, either of us. We’re going to show those bums, we’re going to make 'em choke on our continued success. Our continued headlines! Our continued awards! And power! And glory! We are gonna make those motherfuckers choke! Am I right?
Frost: You are. Except only one of us can win.
Nixon: Yes. And I shall be your fiercest adversary. I shall come at you with everything I got, because the limelight can only shine on one of us. And for the other, it’ll be the wilderness, with nothing and no one for company but those voices ringing in our head. You can probably tell I’ve had a drink. It’s not too many. Just one or two. But you believe me, when the time comes, I’m gonna be focused and ready for battle. Good night, Mr. Frost.
Frost: Good night, Mr. President.

…

Nixon: These men, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, I knew their families, I knew them since they were just kids. But you now, politically the pressure on me to let them go, that became overwhelming. So, I did it. I cut off one arm then I cut the other and I’m not a good butcher. And I have always mantained what they were doing, what we’re all doing was not criminal. Look, when you’re in office you gotta do a lot of things sometimes that are not always in the strictest sense of the law, legal, but you do them because they’re in the greater interest of the nation.
Frost: Alright wait, wait just so I understand correctly, are you really saying that in certain situations the President can decide whether it’s in the best interest of the nation and then do something illegal…
Nixon: I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!
Frost: I’m sorry?

…

Frost: And the American people?
Nixon: I let them down. I let down my friends, I let down my country, and worst of all I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but now they think; ‘Oh it’s all too corrupt and the rest’. Yeah…I let the American people down. And I’m gonna have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over. [/b]

There really are people [millions of them] who still believe this is indeed what we needed to hear. That this reflected the heart and the soul of “corruption” in his adminstration. And that the “secret government” narrative of the left was just [is still just] a fantasy dreamed up by deluded conspiracy theorists.

Reston [in interview]: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.

But in no real substantive manner does this typical, liberal narrative overlap with my own.

[b]Birt [to the camera]: The Nixonl/Frost interviews were wildly successful. I think they attracted the largest audience for a news program in the history of American television. David was on the cover of Time magazine and Newsweek magazine. And even the political press corps, the hard-bitten political press corps, called David up with messages of contrition and congratulation.

…

Nixon[to Frost at their last meeting]: Can I get something for somebody? Yes. Would you like some tea or champagne? Hey, you know, we got that caviar the Shah of Iran sent me.[/b]

Think about that for a while.

First off, we imagine all of the folks we would like to have met had we lived when they lived. In other words, “back then”. Folks a whole lot more, say, stimulating to be around. Folks that make those we interact with in the here and the now pale by comparison.

For example, suppose we popped into ILP at midnight and instead of the usual gang, we were somehow able to exchange posts with historical figures that had always most fascinated us.

Well, not that we ever could of course. But this is one of those “fantastic” films that allows us to imagine it. Just the thought itself of being on our very own fantasy island. For instance, on mine, there is not an objectivist to be found.

The point of it all? Well, it seems to revolve around a theme that virtually every Woody Allen film eventually gets around to: figuring out the best way to cope with the fact that while human existence is essentially meaningless and absurd [and full of misery] we still have no choice but to make the best of it.

Summed up best perhaps by Gertrude Stein: We all fear death and question our place in the universe. The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Remember Isaac going down his list at the end of Manhattan? Something like that.

Of course it always helps to find someone who is most like you to share these things with. And someone to love and to fuck. But in that regard, let’s just say that here Gil and Inez are not that couple.

Look for David Frost. Well, the actor who played him in the film above anyway. He’s the pedant. And, no doubt, an objectivist.

IMDb

[b]Probably inspired by the Moberly-Jourdain incident in 1901 in which two academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, claimed to have experienced a timeslip into pre-revolutionary France on the grounds of Versailles.

The movie’s key art incorporates Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting “Starry Night.” Interestingly, the character of van Gogh does not appear in the film, though he could well have done so in the “Belle Epoque” sequence.

Hemingway and Gil visit Gertrude Stein, who is arguing with Picasso. In the background there is a portrait of her on the wall, painted by Picasso in 1906.

Woody Allen won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for this film. The Oscar was Allen’s fourth and the first he had won since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) 25 years earlier. Allen received two Oscar nominations for this movie, the other being for Best Director, they being his 22nd and 23rd nominations. Additionally, this is his first film since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) to earn a Best Picture nomination.[/b]

FAQs: imdb.com/title/tt1605783/faq … _sm#.2.1.4
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Paris
trailer: youtu.be/atLg2wQQxvU

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS [2011]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

Gil: This is unbelievable! Look at this! There’s no city like this in the world. There never was.
Inez: You act like you’ve never been here before.
Gil: I don’t get here often enough, that’s the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!

Here we go…

Helen: John hates French politics.
John: They’ve certainly been no help to the United States.
Gil: Well, I mean, you can’t exactly blame them for not following us down that rabbit hole in Iraq, with the whole Bush…
Inez: Please, let’s not get into that discussion yet again.
Gil: Honey, honey, we’re not getting into…By the way, it’s fine for your father and I to disagree. That’s what a democracy is. Your father defends the right wing of the Republican Party, and I happen to think you’ve almost got to be, like, a demented lunatic to do that, but it’s like…
Inez: Okay, okay!
Gil: No, but it doesn’t mean we don’t respect each other’s views. Am I right?

The look on John’s face? Priceless.

[b]Gil: Paul is such a pseudo-intellectual.
Inez: Ah, Gil, I hardly think he’d be lecturing at the Sorbonne if he’s a pseudo-intellectual

…

Paul [to Gil and Inez]: Nostalgia for the past is denial - denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in - it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. [/b]

Sounds like a psuedo-intellectual to me. That and a pedant.

[b]Gil: Yeah, actually, she’s right. I recently read a two-volume biography on Rodin, and Rose was definitely the wife, Camille the mistress.
Paul: You read that? Where did you read that?
Gil: Yeah, I just read it. I was surprised because I mistakenly thought, like you, that it was the other way around. It’s an easy mistake.
[after Paul is out of earshot]
Inez: When did you read a biography on Rodin?
Gil: Me?
Inez: Yeah.
Gil: Why would I read a biography on Rodin?

…

Gil: Can I ask you the biggest favor in the world?
Hemingway: What is it?
Gil: Would you read it?
Hemingway: Your novel?
Gil: Yeah, it’s like looking for, you know, an opinion.
Hemingway: My opinion is I hate it.
Gil: I mean, you haven’t even read it.
Hemingway: If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.

…

Gil [to Hemingway]: You’ll show my novel to Gertrude Stein?

…

Gil: Were you scared?
Hemingway: Of what?
Gil: Of getting killed.
Hemingway: You’ll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?
Gil: Yeah, I do. I’d say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.
Hemingway: It’s something all men before you have done, all men will do.
Gil [glumly]: I know, I know…

…

Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave…It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds…until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again. Think about it.[/b]

I guess even the great writers tumble over the edge from time to time.

Intellectuals and artists doing their thing:

[b]Gertrude Stein [to Gil and Hemingway] :I’m glad you’re here. You can help decide which of us is right, and which of us is wrong. I was just telling Pablo that this portrait doesn’t capture Adriana. It has a universality, but no objectivity.
Picasso: No, no, no. You don’t understand correctly. You don’t know Adriana. Look at the motion, the painting. It’s exactly what she represents!
Gertrude Stein: No. You’re wrong. Look how he’s done her: dripping with sexual innuendo, carnal to the point of smoldering, and, yes, she’s beautiful, but it’s a subtle beauty; an implied sensuality. He’s made a creature of Place Pigalle. A whore with volcanic appetites.
Picasso: No, no! It’s true if you know her!
Gertrude Stein: Yes, with you, in private, because she’s your lover, but we don’t know her that way! So you make a petit-bourgeois judgment and turn her into an object of pleasure. It’s more like a still-life than a portrait.
Picasso: No. No. I do not agree!

…

Helen: We saw a wonderfully funny American film last night.
Inez: Who was in it?
Helen: Oh, I don’t know. I forget the name.
Gil: Wonderful but forgettable. It sounds like a film I’ve seen. I probably wrote it.[/b]

I wonder what he is hinting at here? Or who?

[b]Paul: Here’s a superb Picasso. If I’m not mistaken, he painted this marvelous portrait of his French mistress Madeleine Brissou in the '20s.
Gil: Paul, I’m gonna have to differ with you on this one. If I’m not mistaken, this was a failed attempt to capture a young French girl named Adriana, from Bordeaux, if my art history serves me, who came to Paris to study costume design for the theater. I’m pretty sure she had an affair with Modigliani, then Braque, which is how Pablo met her. Picasso. Of course, what you don’t get from this portrait is the subtlety of her beauty. She was just a knock-out.
Inez [incredulous]: What have you been smoking?
Gil: I’d hardly call this picture marvelous, it’s more of a petit-bourgeois statement on how Pablo sees her. Saw her. He’s distracted by the fact that she was a absolute volcano in the sack.

…

Gil [to Adriana]: That was Djuna Barnes? No wonder she wanted to lead!

…

Adriana: I keep forgetting that you are a tourist.
Gil: That is putting it mildly. [/b]

Back again to “the theme”:

[b]Gil [to Adriana]: You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.

…

Gil: Here. Take this.
Zelda Fitzgerald: What is this?
Gil: It’s a Valium. It’ll make you feel better.
Adriana: You carry medicine?
Gil: No, not normally. It’s just since I’ve been engaged to Inez, I’ve been having panic attacks, but I’m sure they’ll subside after the wedding.
Zelda: I’ve never heard of Valium. What is this?
Gil: It’s the…the pill of the future.

…

Man Ray: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Luis Buñuel: I see a film!
Gil: I see insurmountable problem.
Salvador Dalí: I see a rhinoceros!

…

Gil: It’s understated but elegant. That’s what you always say.
Helen: Cheap is cheap. That’s what I always say.

…

Inez [to Gil]: You always take the side of the help. That’s why Daddy says you’re a communist.

…

Gertrude Stein: Oh, Pender! I was just telling Matisse we’re going to buy one of his paintings for our personal collection. I think 500 Francs is fair.
Gil: Yeah, I think that sounds fair. You know, I was wondering if maybe I could pick up 6 or 7.

…

Gil: Oh, Mr. Buñuel. I had a nice idea for a movie for you.
Luis Buñuel: Yes?
Gil: A group of people attend a very formal dinner party. At the end of dinner, when they try to leave the room, they can’t.
Luis Buñuel: Why not?
Gil: They just can’t seem to exit the door.
Luis Buñuel: But why?
Gil: Well, when they’re forced to stay together, the veneer of civilization quickly fades away, and what you’re left with is who they really are: animals.
Luis Buñuel: But I don’t get it. Why don’t they just walk out of the room?
Gil: All I’m saying is just think about. Who knows? Maybe when you’re shaving one day, it’ll tickle your fancy.
Luis Buñuel: But I don’t understand. What’s holding them in the room?

…

Adriana: Let’s never go back to the '20s!
Gil: What are you talking about?
Adriana: We should stay here. It’s the start of La Belle Epoque! It’s the greatest, most beautiful era Paris has ever known.
Gil: Yeah, but about the '20s, and the Charleston, and the Fitzgeralds, and the Hemingways?
Adriana: I mean, I love those guys. But it’s the present. It’s dull.
Gil: Dull? It’s not my present. I’m from 2010.
Adriana: What do you mean?
Gil: I dropped in on you the same way we’re dropping in on the 1890s.
Adriana: You did?
Gil: I was trying to escape my present the same way you’re trying to escape yours, to a golden age.
Adriana: Surely you don’t think the '20s are a golden age!
Gil: Well, yeah. To me they are.
Adriana: But I’m from the '20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is La Belle poque.
Gil: And look at these guys. I mean, to them, their golden age was the Renaissance. You know, they’d trade Belle Epoque to be painting alongside Titian and Michelango. And those guys probably imagined life was a lot better when Kublai Khan was around.

…

Gil: I had a dream the other night, where it was like a nightmare, where I ran out of Zithromax. And then I went to the dentist, and he didn’t have any Novocaine. You see what I’m saying? These people don’t have any antibiotics.
Adriana: What are you talking about?
Gil: Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you’ll start imagining another time was really your…You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying.
Adriana: That’s the problem with writers. You are so full of words.

…

Gertrude Stein [to Gil]: Hemingway did have one plot suggestion - he doesn’t quite believe that the protagonist doesn’t see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes.
Gil: With…?
Gertrude Stein: The other character. The pedantic one.

…

Inez: Gil, your brain tumor is acting up again.

…

John [to Gil]: Say hi to Trotsky![/b]

Being invisible. Some complain about the fact that to others they are invisible. While others complain about the fact that to others they are not invisible enough.

I’m the later. It has reached the point where, other than online, I make myself as invisible to others as possible. If only because, for most of my life, I was always surrounded by people: raised in a big family, growing up in bustling communities, schools, the steel mills, the shipyards, the army, college, a new fanily, political organizations, on the job. So, when I was finally able to drop out of all that I craved nothing more than being invisible. Solitude. I still do. But: It’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just something folks like me have come to crave. And something that others come to dread. Blame it on dasein.

Of course being invisible in a Coen brothers production is going to be a bit more problematic. And in the tradition of film noir, “nothing goes as planned and nothing is ever really what it seems”.

In other words, being invisible can revolve more around concealing who you really are by projecting a bogus “persona” to the public. Sometimes even to those you are nearest and dearest to. Or in just letting them see the tip of the iceberg. Though for some of course the tip is really all there is to see.

The year is 1949. Ed’s a barber. And a laconic barber if you can believe it. Not so much invisible as extremely low key. Not inclined toward, say, the banality of existence. But that seems to be everywhere. But [just as with everbody else] there’s the part about needing dough. And the part about getting more than you need. And the part about all the stuff that goes on in the shadows. The truth here being whatever you can convince others to believe it is.

IMDb

[b]Billy Bob Thornton jokingly made it look like Ed Crane had an erection in one of the scenes where he’s watching Scarlett Johansson’s character playing the piano. Only one of the prop guys noticed during production. When the Coen Brothers later found out, they made it clear that Ed would not be aroused in the scene.

Because he trusted the quality of Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s work, Billy Bob Thornton agreed to do the movie before even reading the script.

The name of the German theoretician that Riedenschneider struggles to remember is Werner Heisenberg.

The title is taken from the William Hughes Mearns poem “Antigonish”.[/b]

You know the one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigonish_(poem

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Wh … (2001_film
trailer: youtu.be/N8jk2NFWXGY

THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE [2001]
Written and directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

[b]Ed [voiceover] Frank Raffo, my brother-in-law, was the principle barber, and man could he talk. Now maybe if you’re 11 or 12 years old, Frank’s got an interesting point of view.

…

Ed [voiceover]: Frank’s father left the shop to Frankie free and clear. And that seemed to satisfy all of Frank’s ambitions: Cutting the hair and chewing the fat. Me, I don’t talk much. I just cut the hair.

…

Ed [voiceover]: Being a barber is a lot like being a bar man or a soda jerk. There’s not much to it once you’ve learned the basic moves. For the kids, there’s the butch, or the heinie, the flattop, the ivy, the crew, the vanguard, the junior contour…and occasionally the executive contour.

…

Ed [voiceover]: Doris and I went to church once a week. Usually Tuesday night.
Priest: B-9. I-29.
Ed [voiceover]: Doris wasn’t big on divine worship, And I doubt if she believed in life everlasting. She’d most likely tell you that our reward is on this earth, And bingo is probably the extent of it.

…

Big Dave: Japs had us pinned down in Buna for something like six weeks. Well, I gotta tell ya, I thought we had it tough, but, Jesus, we had supply. They were eating grubs, nuts, thistles. When we finally up and bust off the beach we found Arnie Bragg, kid missing on recon; the Japs had eaten the sonofabitch, if you’ll pardon the, uh… And this was a scrawny, pimply kid too, nothin’ to write home about. I mean, I never would’ve, ya know, so what do I say, honey? When I don’t like dinner, what do I say? I say, ‘Jesus, honey, Arnie Bragg again’? [/b]

Turns out that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

[b]Ed [voiceover]: Dry cleaning. Was I crazy to be thinking about it?

…

Ed: Frank.
Frank: Huh?
Ed: This hair.
Frank: Yeah.
Ed: You ever wonder about it?
Frank: Whuddya mean?
Ed: I don’t know… How it keeps on coming. It just keeps growing.
Frank: Yeah, lucky for us, huh pal?
Ed: No, I mean it’s growing, it’s part of us. And we cut it off. And we throw it away.
Frank: Come on, Eddie, you’re gonna scare the kid.
Ed: I’m gonna take his hair and throw it out in the dirt.
Frank: What the…
Ed: I’m gonna mingle it with common house dirt.
Frank: What the hell are you talking about?
Ed: I don’t know. Skip it.[/b]

Later…

[b]Ed [voiceover]: I thought about what an undertaker had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, “What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it’s gone?”

…

Big Dave [to Ed]: Yeah, I paid up. As you well know. But then I went and found the pansy. Well, you know the story. I didn’t. I had to beat it out of him.

…

Ed [voiceover]: The barber shop. Doris and Frank’s father had worked years to own it free and clear. Now it got signed over to the bank, and the bank signed some over to Frank. And Frank signed the money to Freddy Riedenschneider. Who got into town two days later…

…

Ed [voiceover…watching people walk up and down the street]: There they were. All going about their business. It seemed like I knew a secret, a bigger one even than what had really happened to Big Dave. Something none of them knew. Like I had made it to the outside somehow, and they were all still struggling way down below.

…

Ed [voiceover]: Of course there was one person who could confirm Doris’s story. Or plenty of it. The dry-cleaning pansy. But he’d left the hotel, skipped out on his bill. He’d also disappeared from the residence he gave me, owing two months’ rent. How could I have been so stupid? Handing over $10.000 for a piece of paper. And the man gone, like a ghost. Disappeared into thin air vaporized like the nips at Nagasaki. Gone now. All gone. The money gone, Big Dave gone, Doris going. How could I have been so stupid?

…

Ed [voiceover]: Most people think someone’s accused of a crime, they haul 'em in and bring 'em to trial. But it’s not like that. It’s not that fast. The wheels of justice turn slow. They have the arraignment, then the indictment, and they entertain motions to dismiss and postpone and change the venue… And alter this and that and the other. They impanel a jury, which bring more motions. Then they set a trial date, and then they change the date. And then, often as not, they’ll change it again.

…

Reidenschneider: They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it’s Werner. Anyway, he’s got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can’t know the reality of what happened, or what would’ve happened if you hadn’t-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no “what happened”? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds… our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the “Uncertainty Principle”. Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy’s on to something.

…

Reidenschneider: Science. Perception. Reality. Doubt. Reasonable doubt. I’m saying that sometimes the more you look, the less you really know. It’s a fact, a proved fact. In…In a way, it’s the only fact there is.

…

Doris [more to herself]: Big Dave. What a dope…

…

Ed [voiceover]: I hired a new man for the second chair. I’d hired the guy who did the least gabbing whie he came in for an interview, But I guess the new man had only kept quiet because he was nervous. Once he had the job, he talked from the minute I opened the shop in the morning until I locked up at night. For all I know, he talked to himself on the way home.

…

Ed [voiceover]: I went to see a woman who was supposed to have powers of communicating with those who had “passed across” as she called it. She said that people who had passed across were picky about who they communicated with, not like most people you run into on this side.

…

Ed [voiceover]: I was turning into Ann Nirdlinger, Big Dave’s wife. I had to turn my back on the old lady, On the veils, on the ghosts, on the dead, before they all sucked me in.

…

Ed [to Birdy]: Life has dealt me some bum cards. Or maybe I just haven’t played 'em right, I don’t know.

…

Ed: Like I said, I’m not an expert.
Jacques Carcanogues: So you can listen to me, for I am expert. Voyez, monsieur. This girl, nice girl. Very clever hands. Nice girl. I think, uh, perhaps some day…she can make very good typist, huh?

…

Ed [voiceover]: They put me on 24-hour death watch, so that I couldn’t cheat justice like they said my wife had done. But in front of the jury, they had it that Doris was a saint. The whole plan had been mine. I was a svengali who had forced Doris to join my criminal enterprise. On and on it went, how I’d used Doris, then let her take the fall. That stuff smarted because some of it was close to being true.

…

Ed [voiceover]: And then it was Riedenschneider’s turn. I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I’d lost my place in the universe; how I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be; how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old “truth” stuff he hadn’t had a chance to trot out for Doris. He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make; that I wasn’t the kind of guy to kill a guy; that I was The Barber, for Christsake. I was just like them - an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not a murderer. He said I was modern man, and if they voted to convict me, well, they’d be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going…

…

Ed [voiceover]: It’s like pulling away from the maze. While you’re in the maze, you go through willy nilly, turning where you think you have to turn; banging into the dead ends. One thing after another. But you get some distance on it, and all those twists and turns, why, they’re the shape of your life. It’s hard to explain. But seeing it whole gives you some peace.

…

Ed [voiceover…about to be executed]: I don’t know where I’m being taken. I don’t know what I’ll find, beyond the earth and sky. But I’m not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don’t have words for here.[/b]

Talk about The Kids!

Only the last thing in the world they are interested in is huffing and puffing philosophy. Nope, here it’s dope. And “partying”. And [of course] being part and parcel of American Youth. Not that they can really be blamed for it though. It is, after all, the only thing most of them have ever known – given the nature of the narcissistic, commodity culture they have been brought up on. And it’s not like, in their own way, their parents aren’t Kids too.

Well, they don’t call this “late capitalism” for nothing.

And this is L.A… Haute Couture. The parents here are far too busying indulging themselves [and their “lifestyle”] to give much thought to their children. And so these spoiled brats become the proverbial “poor little rich kids”. I guess you might say they never had a chance.

But everything starts out so splendidly. And then the inevitable title card: SIX MONTHS LATER…

Unfortunately, this film is not to the novel what American Psycho was to that novel. Only Julian and Rip are really worthy of it. But sometimes this sort of sub-mental decadence is just what folks like me need to be reminded of: of how truly irrelevant we are.

Look for Robert Downey Jr. playing himself.

IMDb

[b]Brad Pitt was paid US $38 for his uncredited cameo appearance.

According to the the ‘Robert Downey Jr Film Guide’ web-site, “supposedly, the director [‘Marek Kanievska’] suggested Robert Downey Jr. and Andrew McCarthy should go out and party to ‘get into character’ which ended with Downey in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard, howling at the moon, and McCarthy had to bail him out of jail”.

The party sequence with all the television screens was filmed at a real 1980s Hollywood nightclub in Los Angeles.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_Than_Zero_(film
trailer: youtu.be/H8TsEr7CK9s

LESS THAN ZERO [1987]
Directed by Marek Kanievska

[b]Clay: What’s the matter, Blair?
Blair: Nothing.
Clay: Blair.
Blair: I’m not going to college. I’m staying here.
Clay: Why?
Blair: I can’t leave now. I’m starting to get all the great jobs. I worked really hard for all this.
Clay: Modeling? Why don’t you try something more challenging, like being a game show host?

…

Clay: Do you girls know that you have televisions between your legs?

…

Rip [with a vial of dope]: You look like you could use a little Christmas cheer.
Clay: No.
Rip: Come on, Clay. Old habits never die. They just hibernate.
Clay: Old dealers?
Rip: They go to jail, right? Play handball with the Wall Street guys. You don’t belong here. These people are assholes. Who gives a fuck about these people?
Clay: I don’t know, Rip. Good customers though, huh?
Rip: Bread and butter.

…

Blair: You don’t understand. He tried so hard. That record deal fell apart. He lost the money his father gave him. But he wouldn’t give up. He borrowed money from Rip. He worked day and night. He did everything he could to keep it going. Nothing helped.
Julian was so hurt. I don’t think he ever really, you know, failed before. He got high all the time.[/b]

Well, at least he had a reason.

[b]Rip: Got a minute, sweetheart?
Julian: Surely.
Rip: We’ve got to talk business friend.
Julian: Relax. I’ll pay you. Just trust me.
Rip: I don’t want to trust you. I just want my 50K.
Julian: Patience is next to godliness. It’s the flip side of cleanliness, but it’s still pretty fuckin’ important.
Rip: What are we talking about, Julian?
Julian: You giving me a ‘‘G’’ on spec.

…

Clay: Are you happy, Blair? You don’t look happy.
Blair: But do I look good?
Clay: Always.

…

Julian [to Clay]: Blair was good to me. I was lonely, and I needed somebody. She was there. It was nice. It wasn’t exactly the World Series of love, though.

…

Rip: You have something for me?
Julian: Man, I had it all worked out. Christ, I thought I did. I fucked up. I don’t have any money. I don’t know where I’m going to get it.
Rip: Julian, this cannot go on forever. You owe me a lot of cash. I’m carrying you like I’m stupid.
Julian: But if you just give me a chance—Please don’t cut me off. I’ll do whatever you want.
Rip: Listen, uh…I want you to do a favor for me.
Julian: Sure.
Rip: You’re going to work for me, just for a while, till we’re even-Steven.
Julian: Business? Like sales?[/b]

Nope.

[b]Clay: You OK?
Blair: It’s the cocaine… too much speed or something.
Clay: That’s a relief.
Blair: What?
Clay: Well, you’re fucked up, you look like shit, but hey no problem, all you need is a better cut of cocaine.

…

Julian: I was wondering if I could stay at home tonight. I’d just really like to wake up and know where the hell I am for once, it’ll be a nice change of pace for me.
Benjamin [dad]: I can’t do that.
Julian: Well I wouldn’t ask, it’s just my options are really kinda limited right now.
Benjamin: Julian, we’ve been through this a hundred times.
Julian: Yeah, a hundred and one, actually.
Benjamin: You conned your way through rehab, you lied, you stole. And look what you’ve done to our family.
Julian: I know, but I just want you to give me a break, I need you to be my father for one goddamn day just… just help me. I mean, can’t you tell when I’m telling the truth?
Benjamin: No. Trust was the first thing you ruined.
Julian [starting to cry]: Yeah.
[pause]
Julian: Okay, well I’m gonna go. There’s this guy I owe a large sum of money to, yeah big surprise but, I’m gonna try and talk to him, I’m gonna try and do something right for once. I mean it. So I just want you to wish me luck, whether you believe me or not.
Benjamin [voice breaking]: Julian? Can you stay clean, for one week? For one damn week? I’ll do everything I can to help you. But I need you to help me too.
Julian [with a blank stare]: I could try.

…

Rip: Julian, who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? You’re a junkie.

…

Rip: Julian, make an effort. Give me a new excuse, at least. I’ve heard this shit before!
Julian: The difference is that I mean it this time.
Rip: Good. Are you ready to work for me tonight?
Julian: No, I’m not. Rip, how long have we known each other? We’ve been friends.
Rip: Yes, we are friends, aren’t we, Julian?
Julian: Yeah. For a long time. Please don’t make me do this. I can’t do it again.
[Bill fires up the grill]
Rip: I think you’d be surprised at what you can do, Julian.

…

Clay: Just leave with me! There’s no reason for you to stay. Not here, not in L.A.
Julian: Jesus! Do I look like I’m ready for homework?!! [/b]

Not even close.

To be or not to be?

And, out of the blue, this can become the center of the universe when someone you love – loved for years – is gone. But that will always be the part where love gets tricky. In other words, you can find it reconfiguring from the reason you want to go on living into the reason you want to stop living altogether. And each and every one of us [eventually] will have our own close calls.

Here things become all the more problematic still because the world is smack dab in the middle of an epic “moment of truth”: The Cuban Missle Crisis. Literally the fate of “all of us” hangs in the balance. If it is not resolved [as it was] literally tens of millions could die.

Trust me: only if you actually lived through it would you have even the remotest inkling of what I am talking about.

Which makes one individual’s reaction to the death of another individual seem all the more problematic. Just imagine how, if the world were once again on the brink of something calamatous – a huge astreroid set to strike, say – that would impact your own teeny, tiny existential crisis.

Of course, the Cuban Missle Crisis occured in 1962. And the man who has chosen “not to be” here is gay. And being gay back then is not the same thing at all as being gay today. For one thing, he is not permitted even to attend his partner’s funeral. That can happen still today, of course, but how much more it did happen back in 1962.

So, does he really want to commit suicide? Consider the scene where he has the gun in his mouth but he doesn’t pull the trigger because he can’t seem to get his head comfortably situated on the pillow. He is…torn.

The ending seemed [at first] rather predictable. He meets this gorgeous young stud. Kenny. Kenny is as iconclastic as himself. And that helps him to “move beyond” Jim. Only that turns out not to be the ending at all.

Look for Julianne Moore to look remarkably like Rene Russo in some shots.

IMDb

[b]Mad Men’s Jon Hamm is the uncredited voice of Hank Ackerley, the man who calls Colin Firth’s character at the start of the film.

Several times, George and other characters refer to their “invisibility” as a minority (in their cases, as gay men in early 1960s American society). George is referring here to the concept of social “invisibility” of black people put forth by Ralph Ellison in his classic novel ‘The Invisible Man’, which was first published about ten years before the events of this movie take place. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Single_Man
trailer: youtu.be/-tCxRO67gyk

A SINGLE MAN [2009]
Written in part and directed by Tom Ford

George [voiceover]: Waking up begins with saying “am” and “now”.
[long pause as he lays there anguished]]
George: For the past eight months waking up has actually hurt. The cold realization that I am still here slowly sets in. I was never terribly fond of waking up. I was never one to jump out of bed and greet the day with a smile like Jim was.I used to want to punch him sometimes in the morning he was so happy.I always used to tell him that only fools greet the day with a smile, that only fools could possibly escape the simple truth that now isnʼt simply now: itʼs a cold reminder. One day later than yesterday, one year later than last year and that sooner or later it will come. He used to laugh at me and then give me a kiss on the cheek. It takes time in the morning for me to become George, time to adjust to what is expected of George and how he is to behave. By the time I have dressed and put the final layer of polish on the now slightly stiff but quite perfect George I know fully what part Iʼm supposed to play. Looking in the mirror staring back at me isnʼt so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Just get through the goddamn day.

Been there? Me too.

[b]George [on phone]:Will there be a service?
Harold: The day after tomorrow.
George: Well I suppose I should get off the phone and book a plane flight.
Harold: The service is just for family.

…

George [thinking of what he had seen the little girl do that morning]: Look around Grant…most of these students aspire to nothing more than a corporate job and a desire to raise coke-drinking, TV-watching children who as soon as they can speak start chanting TV jingles and smashing things with hammers.
Grant: Youʼre really scaring me today, George.

…

Grant: You seem to think this is all a joke. Weʼre living in a world where nuclear war is a real threat. I donʼt understand how you canʼt be concerned.
George: Youʼre serious arenʼt you?
Grant: Yes, Iʼm serious. George, did you even read the article that I gave you on bomb shelters? Ours is almost done. We had 3 different contractors work on it so none of them know what weʼve got, then weʼre having the outside of it landscaped so no one will know it is there.

…

Myron: Sir, on page 79, Mr. Propter says that the stupidest text in the Bible is: “they hated me without a cause.” Does he mean the Nazis were right to hate the Jews? Is Huxley an anti-Semite?
George: No. No, Mr. Huxley is not an anti Semite. The Nazis were obviously wrong to hate the Jews. But their hating the Jews was not without a cause… But the cause wasnʼt real. The cause was imagined. The cause was fear. But let’s leave the Jews out of this just for a moment. Let’s think of another minority. One that…One that can go unnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example…Or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, then the fear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you see there always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us. [/b]

To wit: homosexuality.

[b]George [to his class]: Let’s just talk about fear. Fear, after all, is our real enemy. Fear is taking over our world. Fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. Itʼs how politicians peddle policy and how Madison Avenue sells us things that we donʼt need. Think about it. Fear that weʼre going to be attacked, fear that there are communists lurking around every corner, fear that some little Caribbean country that doesnʼt believe in our way of life poses a threat to us. Fear that black culture may take over the world. Fear of Elvis Presleyʼs hips. Well, maybe that one is a real fear. Fear that our bad breath might ruin our friendships…Fear of growing old and being alone. Fear that we’re useless and that no one cares what we have to say.

…

Jim [in a flashbach]: Explain your friend Charlotte to me.
George: What would you like to know?
Jim: You seem very… I donʼt know… intimate I guess. Like you were once together. You havenʼt ever slept with her have you?
George: Yes. A few times when we were young. I donʼt mean to say that it didnʼt mean anything to me but, Iʼm afraid it meant a good deal more to Charley. It was a long time ago in London. It didnʼt work out very well. I love Charley and we are very close friends but thatʼs all.
Jim: Iʼm confused. If you sleep with women then why are you with me?
George: Because I fall in love with men. Because I fell in love with you. Anyway, doesnʼt everyone sleep with women when theyʼre young?
Jim: I havenʼt.
George: Youʼre joking.
Jim: No. Iʼm not. It was just never anything that interested me.
George: Well. Youʼre awfully modern arenʼt you? You know, that was the first thing that I noticed about you was how sure of yourself you were. How can you be so sure about everything at your age?

…

Jennifer [the little girl with the hammer]: Would you like to meet Charlton Heston? He’s our scorpion. Every night we throw in something new to him and watch him kill it. Daddy says it’s like a Coliseum. Daddy says he wants to throw you into the Coliseum.
George: No kidding. Why?
Jennifer: Well, he says you’re light in your loafers. But you’re not even wearing any loafers. [/b]

Another “dasein” in the making, right?

[b]Carlos: No one has ever picked me up and not wanted something.
George: I think you picked me up. This is kind of a serious day for me.
Carlos: Come on. What could be so serious for a guy like you?
George: I’m just trying to get over an old love I guess.
Carlos: My mother says that lovers are like buses. You just have to wait a little while and another one comes along.

…

Jim [in a flashback to the dog]: And just what do you want?
George: He wants to go out.
Jim: Of course he does. What a life he has. Donʼt you envy him?
George: Why, because he gets to sniff anyoneʼs ass he wants to?
Jim: Nice. I envy him because he just does what he wants…You should take a lesson from him. He doesnʼt stay up all night worrying. He lives in the moment.

…

Charley: This is so nice lying here with you. Donʼt you ever miss this? What we could have been to each other? Having a real relationship and kids?
George (stunned): I had Jim.
Charley: I know, but I mean a real relationship. George, letʼs be honest, what you and Jim had was great but wasnʼt it really just a substitute for something else?
George [now angry]: Is that really what you think after all of these years? That Jim was just a substitute for real love? Jim wasnʼt a substitute for anything, and there is no substitute for Jim, anywhere! And by the way, what was so real about your relationship with Richard? He left you after 9 years! Jim and I were together for 16 years and if he hadnʼt died we would still
be together! What the hell is not real about that!?

…

Kenny: Iʼve always felt this way. I mean weʼre born alone, we die alone. And while weʼre here we are absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies. Really weird. Kinda freaks me out to think about it. We can only experience the outside world through our own slanted perception of it. Who knows what youʼre really like. I just see what I think youʼre like.
George: Iʼm exactly what I seem to be, if you look closely. You know the only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.

…

George [voiceover]: A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

…

George [voiceover]: And just like that…it came…[/b]

David Chase. The one behind The Sopranos. His “directorial debut” on the big screen. Back with James Gandolfini again. Unfortunately, in one of his final acting appearances. He died last year.

But this is no Sopranos.

It’s more just a slice of life…more down to earth. More intimate. And it unfolds at a time when [unlike today] tumultuous changes seemed veritably to be lining up – and from all directions: social, political, cultural.

The British invasion. The Beatles and the Stones. One the new pop sensation and the other considerably more muscular. The Stone’s music was harder, more bluesy. Rougher, tougher. I was unequivally a Stones man myself. It wasn’t until Rubber Soul and Revolver that I actually started to take the Mop Tops more seriously.

On the other hand, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan seemed to spark some the sort of mysterious undercurrent of change in “American Youth”. Suddenly, everyone started thinking about the past, the present and the future in a different way. But beyond that it is near impossible to explain. You really did have to be there.

In fact, I can just imagine folks watching this film today [Kids, say] and being totally baffled: what the fuck was that all about?

Today it’s Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus. Or is that sooo last year?

IMDb

Most feature films slot 1-2 percent of production costs for the music budget, but in "Fade’, music supervisor Steven Van Zandt, had about 10% of the $20-million-plus budget or at least $2 million.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Fade_Away_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8w_uqflpCcU

NOT FADE AWAY [2112]
Written and directed by David Chase

[b]Keith: Is that you?
Mick: Hey. Long time, huh?
Keith: Still selling ice creams off your bicycle?
Mick: Bollocks.
Keith: American R&B? Did you…Did you nick them all?
Mick: I sent off to Chicago. You know, mail order?
Keith: I play that Little Queenie.
Mick: Still wearing out the stylus on your mum’s Philips, Keith?
Keith; Fuck, Mick. I don’t play it on the fucking hi-fi. I got me a Rosetti steel-string. DeArmond pickup.
Mick: Nice. I’ve been singing a bit myself recently. With ol’ Dick Taylor.
Keith: Is that right? You go for Jimmy Reed? “Baby, What You Want Me To Do.”
Mick: Yeah. Yeah.
Keith: I love that song.
Sister [voiceover]: This meeting took place some 20 years after the bombing of London and the end of World War II. We know what happened to those two boys. They became The Rolling Stones. A couple years after that meeting on the train, my brother and his friends also started a band. Not so many people know what became of them. In fact, like with most bands, you’ve never heard of them.

…

Sister [voiceover]:It’s hard to imagine now, but the next historical event came only three weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy.[/b]

Bingo: the Beatles.

[b]Douglas: There’s people with longer hair than me.
Pat [father]: Fags.

…

Pat: Think the Army’s gonna let you drive tanks dressed like a fruit?
Douglas: The Army? Why would I want to join that?
Pat: What the hell you talking about? We had a whole conversation.
Douglas: When? Vietnam is ridiculous.
Pat: What did you say?
Douglas: Plus, this friend of mine, he said that in World War ll they threatened black soldiers with hanging for looking at white women. Why would I want to be associated with an institution like that?
Pat; Look at him. High heels.
Douglas: They’re Cuban heels.
Pat: You wanna wear Cuban heels, go live in Cuba.
Douglas: They have nothing to do with Castro.
Pat: They’re nigger shoes![/b]

Really, not all that far removed from my own expereince “around the dinner table”.

[b]PSA on television [with an atomic bomb exploding in the background]: If you are at home when a surprise attack occurs, crawl beneath a table if it is very near. Or drop to the floor with your back to the window.

…

Band member: It’s time to chip in, cut the demo.
Douglas: I can’t believe it costs 200 bucks.
Band member: If we’re not ready for the studio now, we never will be.
Eugene: Man, that is such a cliche. Why do people say that? Whether or not one is ready at any given point in time has nothing to do phenomenologically with whether one might be increasingly ready later. Maybe we could be more ready. Maybe Van Gogh wasn’t ready to cut off his ear and if he’d waited…

…

Douglas [watching the film Blow Up]: What kind of movie is this? Nothing happens. And there’s no orchestra to tell you, like, “Watch out, this guy’s going to get killed.”
Grace: I think the trees are the music.

…

Douglas: Christmas. Big deal.
Little girl: It’s Jesus’ birthday!
Douglas: He’s probably blowing out the candles right now in Vietnam, plus the lives of about 40,000 children.
Mom: Don’t talk like that.
Uncle: You don’t like it, go live in Red China. I went down to Newark for the pastries for today. The Fabias got a new colored housing project going up right across the street.
Aunt: Nobody built free housing for the Italians when we had nothing. All Mama and Papa gave each of us for Christmas was a navel orange. That’s all they could afford.
Uncle: What I want to know, Douglas MacArthur, is what are you gonna do about the draft without a student deferment? What are you gonna do, tiptoe through the tulips down there at the draft board?
Mom: He’s going to loaf with that Eugene Gaunt.
Douglas: Yeah, well, Mom, you wouldn’t understad being in a band. That’s my true family.
Pat: Your true family, there, they’re gonna pay your enormous food bills, I assume.
Douglas; I told you I’m going to get a job.
Pat: Doing what? Ditch digger and philosopher the rest of your life?
Douglas: Just till we make it.[/b]

Like at Archie Bunker’s house. And my own. But, again, you had to be there.

[b]Sister [voiceover]: In June, 1967, The Beatles released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was known to history as the Summer of Love.

…

Joy: Fuckers! It was a trap![/b]

And so it is off to the mental instritution.

[b]Pat: Who could’ve taken his TV? There’s no mulignans up in Cranston.
Daughter: You’re not supposed to say those words anymore, Dad. You never were, but now even more so. You should call them “Afro-Americans.”
Uncle: What’s so different now?
Daughter: Martin Luther King? Fag, too. You shouldn’t call people that anymore.
Pat: Why not?
Daughter: It’s rude to homosexuals, that’s why. The new term is “gay.”

…

Aunt: Rock and roll, keeps you young, right?
Douglas: Not really, Aunt Josie. It’s an art form. Does Dostoyevsky keep you young?

…

Douglas: I might take a film course.
Pat: Going back to college? Good. Giving college credits now for making movies. Laurel and Hardy had a Ph.D.
Douglas: Film and music are the only two forms of art that both take place within the medium of elapsed time.
Pat: I’m trying to get my customers to pay their goddamn bills on time. I could give a crap about movies and music.

…

Grace: Listen to this. Orson Welles. He said, “The camera is far more than a recording apparatus. It is a means by which messages come to us from the other world. This is the beginning of magic.”
Douglas: He probably stole that from Rod Serling.
Grace: Music has the same attributes. Especially since Hendrix. Plato, he said, “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.”

…

Eugene: Learn 25 new songs? It’s a huge amount of time and effort.
Jerry [manager]: That’s why it’s called the music business.
Eugene: It’s an art form.
Jerry: So they say. Since Sargeant Pepper. But, okay. Let’s stipulate for now it’s an art form. Art, painting, literature.
Eugene: But playing for drunks every night? Getting booed?
Jerry: Hey, the Beatles spent two years playing German strip bars, dodging bratwurst.

…

Douglas [to folks at a Hollywood party]: Do you know where Rod Serling lives?

…

Douglas: Somebody said Jagger was in there for a while with some chicks.
Grace: Nobody at that party really, actually saw Jagger.
Douglas: I saw Charlie, man.
Grace: What, you think The Stones all ride around together in some stupid van like you and your wiffle-ball friends back in Jersey?

…

Sister [voiceover]: I had to write this term paper. And I made it about how America has given the world two inventions of enormous power. One is nuclear weapons. The other is rock and roll. It’s a question, I wrote, which one is going to win out in the end.[/b]

Hmm. Too close to call?

Take your average, ordinary male asshole. A cynical nihilist perhaps. How do you turn him around? Well, he’ll need plenty of practice. So let’s have him relive the same day over and over and over and over and over and over. You know, until he finally figures out that he is an asshole. And then until he finally gets it right. Right being how men are supposed to behave so as not to be assholes.

Sort of like Nietzsche’s eternal return – only with the possibility to “fix” things. The Hollywood rendition as it were.

Indeed: The idea comes from ‘The Gay Science’, a famous book by Friedrich Nietzsche. In his book, Nietzsche gives a description of a man who is living the same day over and over again.

On the other hand, there are at least a dozen more sources that are said to be the inspiration.

It’s really a lesson for all of us: stop doing the same things in the same way day after day after day after. At least if you expect things to change.

And just think of all the diabolocal plot twists [not to mention philosophical implications] they could have explored here. But nope:

Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis both said that they avoided exploring the truly dark side of Phil’s time lapsing in which he could do truly horrible things without consequence. IMDb

He does use it to get laid though.

On the other hand, you can just think of this as an entertaining flick that is often really, really funny. But if I did that I wouldn’t be a cynical nihilist, right?

Look for the hicks. And then ask yourself: could they be right? Anyway, if you can’t beat them, join them. In other words, the end of the film is all but insufferable. You know, for someone like me.

IMDb

[b]Bill Murray was bitten by the groundhog twice during shooting. Murray had to have anti rabies injections because the bites were so severe.

Since the film’s release, the town of Punxatawney has now become a major tourist attraction.

According to the website Wolf Gnards, Bill Murray spends 8 years, 8 months and 16 days trapped in Groundhog Day. The website Obsessed With Film claims he was trapped 12,403 days, just under 34 years, in order to account for becoming a master piano player, ice sculptor, etc.

The scene where Phil picks up the alarm clock and slams it onto the floor didn’t go as planned. Bill Murray slammed down the clock but it barely broke, so the crew bashed it with a hammer to give it the really smashed look. The clock actually continued playing the song like in the movie.

According to director Harold Ramis, most of the times when he tried to explain a scene to Bill Murray, Murray would interrupt and ask, “Just tell me - good Phil or bad Phil?”

A family of groundhogs was actually raised for the production.

The groundhog ceremony is depicted as occurring in the center of town. Gobbler’s Knob, where the ceremony takes place in real life, is a rural, wooded area, about two miles outside of Punxsutawney. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
trailer: youtu.be/tSVeDx9fk60

GROUNDHOG DAY [1993]
Written in part and directed by Harold Ramis

Phil [to Larry]: Someday somebody will see me interviewing a groundhog…and think I don’t have a future.
Rita [being as cute as possible]: I think it’s a nice story. He comes out, and he looks around. He wrinkles up his little nose. He sees his shadow or he doesn’t see it. It’s nice. People like it.
Phil: People like blood sausage too. People are morons.

The hicks, in other words. So, you know these two are destined to live happily ever after.

[b]day one:
Mrs. Lancaster: Will you be checking out today, Mr. Connors?
Phil [snidely]: Chance of departure today: one hundred percent!

day two:
Mrs. Lancaster: Will you be checking out today, Mr. Connors?
Phil [less snidely]: I’d say the chance of departure today is…eighty percent. Seventy five to eighty.

…

Phil: Ned, I would love to stay here and talk with you…but I’m not going to.

…

Ned [to Phil]: Watch out for that first step. It’s a doozy!

…

Rita: You’re missin’ all the fun! These people are great! Some of them have been partyin’ all night long! They sing songs 'till they get too cold and then they go sit by the fire and they get warm, and then they come back and sing some more!
Phil: Yeah, they’re hicks, Rita.

…

Phil [to Rita]: It’s the same old schtick year after year. The guy with the big stick raps on the door. They pull the little rat out. They talk to him. The rat talks back and then they tell us what’s gonna happen.

…

Phil: This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather. I, for one, am very grateful to have been here. From Punxsutawney, this is Phil Connors. So long.
Rita: Okay, want to try it again without the sarcasm?

…

Cop: Look, pal, you can go back to Punxsutawney or you can freeze to death. It’s your choice. What’s it gonna be?
Phil [as though seriously pondering it]: I’m thinking.

…

Phil: Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?
Mrs. Lancaster: I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.

…

Phil: Excuse me, where is everybody going?
Woman on Street: To Gobbler’s Knob. It’s Groundhog Day.
Phil: It’s still just once a year, isn’t it?

…

Phil: Can I be serious with you with you for a minute?
Rita: I don’t know. Can you?

…

Phil [on the phone]: Tomorrow? Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.

…

Phil: So, what do I do?
Psychologist: I think we should meet again. How’s tomorrow for you?

…

Phil: I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters.
[Ralph and Gus snort]
Phil: That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over, and over, and over…

…

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

…

Phil: Let me ask you guys a question. What if there were no tomorrow?
Ralph: No tomorrow? That would mean there would be no consequences. There would be no hangovers. We could do whatever we wanted!
Phil [the light bulb finally clicking on]: That’s true. We could do whatever we want.

…

Rita [watching Phil gorge himself on desserts]: I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It’s inspiring, in a way.
Phil: My years are not advancing as fast as you might think.

…

Rita: Don’t you worry about cholesterol, lung cancer, love handles?
Phil: I don’t worry about anything anymore.

…

Rita:"The wretch, concentered all in self… Living, shall forfeit fair renown… And, doubly dying, shall go down… To the vile dust, from whence he sprung… Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung. " Sir Walter Scott. What, you don’t like poetry?
Phil: I love poetry. I just thought that was Willard Scott.

…

Phil: I think people place too much emphasis on their careers. I wish we could all live in the mountains at high altitude. That’s where I see myself in five years. How about you?
Rita: Oh, I agree. I just like to go with the flow. See what happens.
Phil: Well, it’s led you here.
Rita: Mm hmm. Of course it’s about a million miles from where I started out in college.
Phil: You weren’t in broadcasting or journalism?
Rita: Uh unh. Believe it or not, I studied 19th-century French poetry.
Phil: La fille que j’aimera Sera comme bon vin Qui se bonifiera Un peux chaques matin.
Rita: You speak French!
Phil: Oui.[/b]

I pasted this into Google translate: “The girl I love good wine as Sera who shall allow a can every morning.”

[b]Phil [to the camera]: This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat.

…

Rita: Why would anybody steal a groundhog?
Larry [thinking of Phil]: I can probably think of a couple of reasons. Pervert.

…

Phil: I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned.
Rita: Really?
Phil: Every morning I wake up fine, not a scratch…not a dent in the fender. I am an immortal.
Waitress: The special today is blueberry waffles.

…

Phil: You like boats, but not the ocean. You go to a lake in the summer with your family up in the mountains. There’s a long wooden dock and a boathouse with boards missing from the roof, and a place you used to crawl underneath to be alone. You’re a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You’re very generous. You’re kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel.
Rita [startled]: How are you doing this?
Phil: I told you. I wake up every day, right here, right in Punxsutawney, and it’s always February 2nd, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

…

Phil [to Rita]: I’ve killed myself so many times I don’t even exist anymore.[/b]

From the director of Cure and Pulse above. So you know the narrative will explore parts of the human psyche we often try to avoid.

And, more to point, we try to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time when we come into contact with those who not only seek out those parts, but act on them.

And this is always far more likely when they are stuck in dead-end jobs that are smack dab in the middle of dead-end lives smack dab in the middle of one or another dreay working class sinkhole.

And then on top of that one of them has an obsession with jellyfish. Slowly but surely he seeks to acclimate the very deadly Red jellyfish to fresh water. What this all means is never really made clear. Perhaps to create an army of them able to survice in the fresh water environs of Tokyo. Sow a lot of death that way. And all it takes is one. Something called “binary fission”.

For some you wonder: What made him snap? For others you wonder: what stopped him? For most of course the question never comes up. And oddly enough it can be them that intrigue you the most.

For most of us there is the gap between the bright future we dreamed about and the more muted reality that we actually live. One way or another that gap must be bridged.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Future
trailer: youtu.be/EUT7wkew3iM

BRIGHT FUTURE [Akarui Mirai] 2003
Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

[b]Nimura: I’ve always had lots of dreams when I sleep. The dreams have always been about the future. The future in my dreams was always bright. A future brimming with hope and peace. So I’ve always loved to sleep. That is, until just recently…

…

Arita: Better to trust your dreams.
Nimura: I’m telling you I don’t have any.
Arita: Maybe that is just as well.

…

Nimura [of the jellyfish]: It never reacts at all.
Arita: That’s just it’s nature. I’m sure you two will get along fine.

…

Fujiwara [to Nimura after Arita quits]: When I looked up that jellyfish, I found it was poisonous. But he never let me know. He was going to let it kill me. When I called him on it, he said he would quit. I don’t have a clue what he is thinking.

…

Arita [to Nimura]: Shocked? Of course you are shocked. I just kind of did it. And look at me now.

…

Nimura: Sometimes, I can see the future in my dreams. I’ve always been that way. But for a while, now, I’ve hardly dreamed at all. And when I did, it was just darkness.[/b]

But then he has a “clear one”.

[b]Shinichiro: Nimura, There are things you can do in this world and there are things that you can’t. You’re all wrong if you think you can do anything you want. I saw the jellyfish. I really did. It was beautiful. But what’s going to come of it? Will it change reality? Will it help you to get what you want?

…

Shinichiro [to Nimura]: Why can’t you try facing this reality? Because it’s scruffy and filthy? We’ll that’s insulting! Because this reality also happens to be my reality!! You have no right to treat it with such contempt, you fool!!![/b]

Dreams, it seems, cost money. There, just like here.

Talk about dasein!

And this one is said to be based on a true story. Or, perhaps, based more on an interpretation of a number of events similar to this that had unfolded over the years. In fact, I’d say the odds that this is a realistic portrayal of what actually did happen are about one in a billion.

Still, imagine it:

You are a young boy. Just seven years old. Your father is in charge of constructing a dam in the Amazon Rain Forest. While at the edge of the construction site, you are taken by a local aboriginal tribe and are raised in their tribal village as though one of them. Years later your father finds you and over time you are reunited with your family. What to do: stay or go?

And: who are you: Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

Now, imagine a discussion in which the implications of this are examined by a room filled with serious philosophers. As opposed to, say, someone like me.

Of course, given this context, it is inevitable there will be a discussion [debate] about the pros and the cons of living in “the modern world” versus being more at one with nature in a [technologically] primitive tribe. And so the “savages” here are portrayed as basically “noble”. The Invisible People. Not at all like, say, the Yanomamo. Or here the Fierce People.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emerald_Forest
trailer: youtu.be/XPARBhwKNrs

THE EMERALD FOREST [1985]
Directed by John Boorman

[b]Tommy [gesturing toward the rainforest]: Hey, Dad, there are people in there.

…

Title card: Bill Markham spent all of his spare time searching the rain forest for Tommy, hoping against hope. After ten years, the dam he had come to build was nearing completion. His son was still missing…

…

Werner [a journalist to Bill]: It’s a big problem here. More than 2,000,000 abandoned children roaming the street. I would cover them but it has already been done too many times.

…

Jean: There are times when I…
Wener: …when you almost wish he were dead?
[she looks at him startled]
Werner: No, no, so you could stop all this searching and you would have some…peace of mind. I can understand that.
Jean: No, you don’t understand at all.

…

Werner: Can you smell it? The oxygen? 40% of the world’s oxygen is produced here in the Amazon.
Bill: Come on, Uwe, you know oxygen doesn’t smell. It’s…the rot, the decay.

…

Bill: This is Uwe Werner.
Missionary: How do you do.
Werner: A confirmed atheist, I’m afraid.
Missionary: Ah, a confirmed atheist. It’s hard to keep up with new ideas out here.

…

Wanadi [to Tomme]: Beware, it’s a very hungry jaguar that hunts fish.

…

Werner [of the mosquitos]: How do they do it? How do the get under the net?!!

…

Werner [after Bill strings up the pot and pans…the knives and mirrors]: Waiting. Always waiting. Is that all you do out here for ten years…wait?
Bill: Mostly.

…

Werner [of the Fierce People]: Do you think they are a lost tribe?
Bill: If anyone is lost it is us.

…

Bill: Tommy…
Tomme: My name is Tomme. We go to my father. He will help you.
Bill: I am your father.
Tomme: No, you are Daddee.
[he points to his head]
Tomme: You live in there, when I dream. Now you are here.

…

Wanadi: When a dream becomes flesh, trouble is not far behind.

…

Bill: Why did you take my son?
Wanadi: One day, I was hunting at the Edge of The World when Tomme appeared and he smiled; and even though you were a Termite Child, I had not the heart to send you back to The Dead World.
Tomme: Why are they called The Termite People?
Wanadi: They come into The World and chew down all the trees. Just like termites.

…

Bill: Tomme, I want you to come with me. Momme wants you to come home.
Kachiri: He is finished with mothers. I am his woman now.
Bill: You stole my son.
Tomme: Dadee.
Bill: He took you from me, from Momme.
Tomme: That was long ago.
Bill: I just want you to see the home that you came from.
Tomme: This is my home. It will be the home of my children.

…

Bill: Tomme, I must go back.
Wanadi: Why go back to that terrible place? You can stay and become a great warrior and hunter.
Bill: My family is there. It is where I belong. I swore to Tommy’s mother that I woud bring him back.
Wanadi: You heart is torn. If you take him, you’ll wish you had not. If you don’t take him you will wish you had.

…

Wanadi [to Tomme]: When I was a boy, the edge of the world was very far away, but it comes closer each year.

…

Man: I know you. You are The Invisible People. Come. Hurry. So there are still people like you. We once lived out there, not far from you. You called us The Bat People. Because we hunted at night.
Tomme: My father told me many stories about your tribe.
Man: Why do you come here?
Tomme: We seek what you call a White Man.

…

Bill [pointing toward the dam]: Tommy, my son. Do you see that? Do you know what it is?
Tomme: Wanadi said…it is a big log jam.
Bill: Yes. Lots of logs and the river cannot flow. Because of that log jam more white people will come here and enter the world and cut down more trees and take what is yours.
Tomme: They will not find us. We are The Invisible People.
Bill: They will, Tommie. They will see you.[/b]