philosophy in film

The man is homeless, impoverished, a derelict. One of the walking, talking dead. In the very first scene he is found sleeping in the bathtub of an abandoned apartment.

But this sort of thing will always be construed as a political football here in America. Folks on the right will claim he has nobody to blame but himself. We all have an equal opportunity to make something out of our lives and this guy fumbled the ball. He’s on his own. Folks on the left however will scoff at the idea of “equal opportunity” and insist that it is largely the obligation of “society” to help those who have fallen through the cracks.

And, at the very least, we should afford all citizens at least a modicum of human dignity. The problem here though is that many of them are not in the least bit dignified at all. In fact they are downright unpleasant to be around. And even when the state is willing to help there are always the bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Or the state wants to become your “nanny”.

And few films like this don’t also add a “personal touch”. Somewhere out there is someone [usually a close family member] who is estranged from this decrepit soul. In this case, his daughter.

Here of course the film can become either insufferably sweet or considerably more down to earth. Meaning the estrangement can be bursting at the seams with cliches or reflect more unpredictable, ambiguous and rawer encounters.

Fortunately, it chooses the latter. At least from my point of view.

Interspersed into the main plot are also all these vignettes of life in the big city. All the different folks living all the different lives that we may or may not have a clue about. Folks that may or may not be sympathetic to the plight of someone like George.

IMDb

[b]During filming, a French tourist mistook Richard Gere - who was in full wardrobe - for a homeless man and gave him some leftover pizza. The tourist later found out that it was Gere after reading about the film in a New York Post article.

More than 20 attendees walked out during the Toronto International Film Festival screening of the film.[/b]

Why? Nothing from a Google search.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_ … (2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/dKlgzSjFThM

TIME OUT OF MIND [2014]
Written and directed by Oren Moverman

[b]Art: Go outside and wait. You can’t wait in here. You can’t sleep here. You cannot come back here. Let’s go. Come on.
George: Hey, look. Cut me some slack, man. Come on. Come on. I’m not bothering anyone. I’m not bothering anybody.
Art: You’re scaring the neighbors.

Man: Maggie?
Maggie: Yep.
Man: This guy gave me these pictures to give to you.
[she looks at the pictures]
Man: Is that you. 'Cause this little girl looks like you.

George [to a doctor who has been kind to him]: You know, I’ve always been really very good with women. Women have always been incredibly kind to me. And…I really have no, uh, place to go right now and, um, I’m not a bum. I’m a very clean guy. I’m not a bad guest really. I’m just…I’m in between…
Doctor: Sorry.

Man in church: Are you here for English as a second language? Meditation Mondays?
George: No, I’m just looking for a coat.

Man from shelter: Hey. Hey, listen. You can’t stay here. It’s not a Code Blue night.
George: It’s okay. It’s all right.
Man from shelter: No, it’s not. It’s not a Code Blue night.
George: No, no, no, no. I’m not bothering anybody.
Man from shelter: No, no. You can sleep here if it’s 32 degrees or below. But it’s not 32 degrees or below.
George: What temperature is it outside?
Man from shelter: It’s more than 32 degrees.
George: But the wind chill. There’s a really bad wind out there.[/b]

Off to Bellevue…

[b]Guard [at the Bellevue homeless intake center]: As you enter the facility please take all outerwear off. Belts off. All items out of your pockets. Remove all hats, scarves. Any unauthorized items, please get rid of them now. As soon as your stuff goes through the machine an officer will instruct you to walk through the metal detector.

George: Look, can I just get a bed for tonight?
Clerk: Do you have any form of ID?
George: No. No, I don’t.
Clerk: Do you know anyone you can call? Anybody you could stay with? A friend’s couch?
George: I don’t have…I don’t have anybody. No one. Look, are you filled up or something? I could come back later.
Clerk: There is no later. The law says we got to give you a bed.
George: I’ll take anything you got. I’ll sleep on the floor.

Clerk: You’ll stay tonight. In a bed. If you qualify, you’ll be assigned a permanent shelter.
George: Permanent?
Clerk: It’s up to you. We have all kinds.
George [exasperated]: It’s been a long time since I had a job. It’s been many years. I’m too old to be hired. No one’s going to hire me like, uh, like the way I am. I’m—I’m just really no good right now.
Clerk: Have a seat.
George: Why?

Clerk: How about a family? You got a family?
George [suspiciously]: If I say that I have a family does that mean I can still stay here?
Clerk: Yes. Unless they’d be willing to take you in.
George: I don’t have a family.
Clerk: Come on, darling, you would much rather stay with your family than to stay here, you understand what I’m saying?

Clerk: Children. Have any children?
George: One. One girl.
Clerk: Oh, daughter. She know you’re here? Hmm? You could give her a call.
[George chuckles bitterly shaking his head]
Clerk: Yeah, daughters and daddies. Special relationship. I loved my daddy. Sure did. I just worshipped the ground he walked on. He could do no wrong in my eyes. He was a rock.
George: I don’t know where she is. I…I haven’t seen her in a while. Anyway, she doesn’t want me. She’s not one of those daughters. She doesn’t…adore me. She doesn’t, uh, worship the ground I walk on. I didn’t, uh, pay much attention to her. My mind was on something else.
Cleek: On something else? Like what?
George [after a long pause]: I’m just a fuckup. Probably always was.

Clerk: Have you ever been addicted to any legal or illegal substances? And please don’t lie.
George [really exasperated]: I just want a place to sleep, please.
Clerk: We will have to do a psychiatric evalution…
George: I just want a bed, I just wanted a bed to sleep in. I’m addicted to sleep.
Clerk: …and you will have to be elaluated with a social history within 21 days…
George: I’m getting the idea…I feel like you don’t want me to be here. Is that it? Is that true? Because I’m feeling that you just want me to go away.
Clerk: I want what is best for you…
George: You want what’s best for…you don’t know me. How are you gonna know what’s best for me?

Man in shelter [to George]: What’s the matter, you afraid of me, newbie? Afraid I’ll take your things? Afraid I’ll fuck you up? Why would I fuck with you? No, you fuck up here, you go to the next step shelter, which is, you know, the last step shelter really. And then you’re up shit’s creek without a paddle. Then they can kick you out for a year. They can’t deny you a bed if you don’t fuck up. So you got to learn to play their game.

Dixon [to George]: Listen to this. Do you know that every human male – that’s a man like you and me – makes enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every ovulating woman on this planet. That’s a fact, man. I heard it once from this doctor I was hanging out with out on the streets. He was a meth head. Tweaker.

Dixon [to George]: Think about it from the taxpayer’s point of view. We get a mattress, a bed, a locker, shampoo, toothpaste. It ain’t right. It ain’t a square deal. We didn’t earn it. It’s a hand-out, not a hand-up.

George: Wait, wait, wait. I was just going to get some beer.
Karen: You got money?
George: I got enough for a six pack. You want some?
Karen: Do I get to keep the empty cans?

Maggie: Actually I don’t need to know anything about your life. So, what is it that you want? You want money? Is that it? Alright, well, here. It’s all I have.
George [taking the money]: Uh, here, I…I don’t need all of it.
Maggie: What else?
George: You seem good. You seem pretty good.
Maggie: What else? What else do you want because I’m busy. And I don’t want to get involved in any of your fucked up shit ever again. I don’t.
George [turning to leave]: All right. Thank you.
Maggie: Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.
[he says nothing]
Maggie: I’m probably going to move away, Dad. Like far away. Then you won’t be able to find me. So you should just say good-bye now.

George: I’m nobody. I don’t exist.
Dixon: You’re reduced…
George: We don’t exist.
Dixon: What do you mean we don’t exist?
George: What the fucking…We don’t exist!
Dixon: Maybe you don’t exist. I exist. And I’m gonna prove that you exist.
George: They think you’re a fucking clown! They think we’re clowns. We’re cartoons.

Dixon: You should be working. You should get your own place. But you don’t. Why? Why is that? 'Cause you’re sick in the head. You got no support system. You got old and, uh, you love the sauce too much. You don’t like yourself. You’re depressed. You don’t believe in yourself. So what’s society supposed to do with you? Why should they care? It’s all your fault.
George: If you keep talking like this about me I am going to hurt you. Do you understnd that? I will hurt you, I swear.
Dixon: I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about myself.

Dixon [to George]: Vegans. The kindest people on the planet. They don’t eat animals. Takes a man who don’t eat animals to treat a human being right.

Maggie [bartending]: I really…I don’t know what you want me to do. I mean what do you want? I don’t know what I could do that I haven’t already tried or…Cause normally, it’s, you know, it’s the parents that take care of the kid. Not really the other way around. So…why are you doing this.
George [sobbing]: I have…You don’t have to worry about me.
[more sobbing]
George: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Maggie: No. You gotta go. Just leave. Just get out of here. Leave![/b]

A dramatic recreation of the events depicted in the film Man On Wire above.

And, as Philippe Petit himself notes, the first question that everyone always asked him was this: “Why?”

Why would someone literally risk so much in order to accomplish something that in the larger scheme of things doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans? And, in fact, could quite easily result in his death.

For example: youtu.be/q0VNsgyVe7E

So, if, like me, you have mixed feelings regarding “accomplishments” of this sort, then we are probably not alone.

There just seem to be those among us who, having experienced the exhilaration of an adrenaline rush this intense, are going to keep pushing the envelope in order to recreate it again and again and again.

In other words, this is one of those very, very rare human beings: One who lives [and who loves] his life almost entirely on his own terms. Really, how many of us can ever say that? On this level?

Just think of it all [as he himself did] as a “work of art”.

And, as with Man On Wire, this film is superb in laying out just how incredibly complex it was just setting up the rigging that would be needed to pull off the walk. The mind-boggling logistics! The endless close-calls!

Imagine trying to pull it off post-9/11.

And even though you know that the event had already been accomplished, it is still nerve-wracking to watch him out on that wire. Knowing, for example, that never in a million years would you ever attempt something like it yourself.

And then there is this question: How was it filmed given that the Twin Towers are no longer around? With computer special effects no doubt. Also: how much of what we see up on the screen did Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually perform “for real”. For example: balanced with one foot on a rope while juggling lit torches?

IMDb

[b]Philippe Petit himself personally trained Joseph Gordon-Levitt how to walk on a tightrope. When the training started, Petit predicted that Gordon-Levitt would need no more than 8 days of training to be able to walk on a wire alone, which came true.

During the film’s New York City premiere the realism of the film’s climax caused some viewers to actually throw up from vertigo, at least one reviewer claimed that. Director Robert Zemeckis responded, he didn’t believe that report, but “[the goal] was to evoke the feeling of vertigo. We worked really hard to put the audience up on those towers and on the wire.”

To help get an idea of the distance and height of the climatic wire walk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt went to the World Trade Center memorial, where there are two pools representing where the towers originally stood, and walked the distance between them. He also recounted his own experience when he visited the observation deck on top of one of the towers in the summer of 2001, saying of the sensation of being at such a height, “It felt more like being in the sky than being on a tall building.” [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walk_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/eKSeSX-dzso

THE WALK [2015]
Written in part and directed by Robert Zemeckis

[b]Philippe: “Why?” That is the question people ask me most. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire? Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death. But, I don’t think of it this way. I never even say this word, death. La mort. Yes of okay, I said it once, or maybe three times, just now… But watch, I will not say it again. Instead, I use the opposite word. Life. For me, to walk on the wire, this is life. C’est la vie.

Philippe [now standing in the torch of the Statue of Liberty]: So, picture with me it’s 1974, New York city, and I am in love with two buildings - two towers. Or as everyone in the world will calls them, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. They call to me. These towers, they stir something inside of me, and they inspire in me a dream. My dream is to hang a high-wire between those twin towers, and walk on it! Of course, uh, this is impossible, not to mention, illegal. So, why attempt the impossible? Why follow your dream? But, I cannot answer this question why, not with words. But I can show you how I happened. And so, we must go back in time, and across the ocean, because my love affair with these beautiful towers did not begin in New York. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not from here. No, my story begins in another one of the world’s most beautiful cities, se Paris.

Philippe [voiceover]: Here I am, a self-proclaimed wire walker that nobody on earth cares about, surviving as a troubadour performing in the streets. I’ve created a character. I have a top hat. I wear only black. I teach myself to draw a perfect circle on the ground, and within this circle, I never speak, not one word. The circle is my domain, and I don’t allow even half of a toe inside of it. And if the spectators continue to violate my sacred space, well, I must employ more drastic measures. I perform for anyone who will watch me, and people love it. Man, woman, young, old, everyone. Except, of course, the police. I don’t believe in getting permits.

Philippe [voiceover at the dentist office]: Suddenly, I freeze. The pain in my tooth is gone. In the magazine, there’s an article with an illustration about the towers. They’re not even finished yet, but the magazine says that once they are, they will be the tallest in the world.
[he draws a line between the towers]
Philippe: And with this tiny pencil stroke, my fate was sealed.

[b]Papa Rudy: The performer must have an honest respect and gratitude for the audience.
Philippe: But why should I respect the audience? It is me on the wire.
Papa Rudy: You will salute the audience and pay respect! There is no show without an audience! Unless you understand that, you will never perform in circus.
Philippe: Good, okay, me, I don’t want to perform in the circus. I am not some ridiculous circus clown. I am an artist!
[Papa Rudy throws him out]
Philippe [voiceover]: So, just like that, Papa Rudy threw my artistic little ass out into the street.

Philippe: It will be the most glorious high wire walk in history.
Annie: And how high must this wire be to make so much glory?
Philippe: Over 100 stories high.
Annie: Where do trees like this grow?
Philippe: These are not trees.

Philippe: I need you to teach me how to rig a high wire.
Papa Rudy: High wire for what? You’re a street juggler.
Philippe: But I need to know how to tie the correct knots. I need to know what kind of cable to use, the weight, the thickness, the load strength.
Papa Rudy: So, you want me to just give you my secrets. Secrets I’ve spent a lifetime learning. Secrets I’ve only given to my sons. You want me to just hand them over to you.
Philippe: I can pay you. I have money. I don’t care what it costs.
Papa Rudy: Meet me at le cirque at sunrise. Bring your juggling money.

Papa Rudy: Most wire walkers, they die when they arrive. They think they have arrived… But they are still on the wire. If you have three steps to do, and if you do those steps arrogantly…if you think you are invincible…You are going to die!
[Philippe reaches into his pocket for money to pay Papa Rudy]
Papa Rudy [stopping him]: This one, I give to you for free.

Philippe [voiceover]: Now, walking on the wire is as much mental as it is physical. If you lose your concentration, you lose your balance.
[he falls off the wire into the lake]
Annie: Philippe!
Philippe: So here I am, in the mud to my knees doing the Papa Rudy compliment. This was my first public performance. A failure.

Philippe [voiceover while crossing the towers of the Nortre-Dame Cathedral]: And when the first tourist start to arrive in the morning, I begin. And I succeed. I perform my first surprise, illegal high wire walk. This is also the first time I get the taste of this sensation. This feeling that I’m crossing into a…a truly different world. And I was redeemed.[/b]

And also arrested.

[b]Philippe [on the edge of a beam atop a World Trade Tower]: I find myself standing on an island floating in mid-air, on the edge of the void. Of course, I automatically look across to the opposite tower. But then I have to dare to look down. Now, I think I know the void. I’m a wire walker. The void is my domain, yes? Well, not this void. But, still I gather the courage to whisper. I whisper so the demons won’t hear me. It’s impossible. But I’ll do it.

Papa Rudy: Here’s what you’re going to do, Philippe. You’re going to wear a safety belt underneath your costume, attached to a safety line, connected to a carabiner.
Philippe: A safety line? A carabiner? I’m not going to do this walk with a safety line hanging off of me!
Papa Rudy: From that height, it will be invisible! No one will have any idea!
Philippe: And what do I do when I get to the first cavaletti?
Papa Rudy: You’re a performer. You kneel down on the wire. You unhook from side, clip it on the other. The audience will think you are saluting.
Philippe: This I will not do! This I will never do!
Papa Rudy: So why’d you come here? Because you know so much? You tell me I’m wrong?
Philippe: No. Because I need you to tell me how to rig this wire! Not do a phony walk like a coward!

Papa Rudy: This isn’t a game, Philippe. One mistake out there and you’re going to die.

Philippe: Polypropylene ropes, hemp ropes, small block-and-tackle with three sheaves, large block-and-tackle with single sheaf, uh, slings, steel wire, quarter-inch cable, pulley blocks, construction gloves, monkey wrenches, tape measure. And a balancing pole in four sections.
Customs official: And, uh, what’s all this for?
Philippe: I’m going to hang a high wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walk on it.
Custums official: Hmmph. Good luck!

Philippe [voiceover]: I rode all the elevators. The local, the express, the express to the upper sky lobby, the express to the lower sky lobby. I took hundreds of rides. I spied on the maintenance men, the loading docks. I watched the freight trucks as they made their deliveries. What time do they arrive? How long do they stay? How much paperwork is exchanged. My greatest disguise was that of an architect. I wore a tie and carried a blueprint, and I tried to look important. And this gave me access to everything under construction.[/b]

Then he steps on the nail.

[b]Barry: Well, it’s certainly illegal, that’s for sure. And extremely subversive, not to mention dangerous. This is something only a twisted, antisocial, anarchistic, pissed-off malcontent would have anything to do with!
[he reaches out to grab Philippe’s hand]
Barry: You have your inside man!

Philippe: I forgot to nail shut the coffin.
Annie: Stop calling it that!
Philippe: A coffin is what this may be.
Annie: That’s not funny. What’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish or something?
Philippe: Don’t say this word! I never say this word.
Annie: Come on! Death, coffin, die. it’s all the same thing.
Philippe: Why are you doing this? Why are you suddenly against me?
Annie: Against you? No one is more supportive.
Philippe: Then why do you say this word? Why do you put this thought in my head on the night before my most dangerous walk? Why are you so uncaring?
Annie: Uncaring? You’re the most selfish, arrogant…
Philippe: Yes, I’m arrogant! I have to be. To walk on the wire, to command the wire!

Albert: Philippe, this is crazy. We’re never going to finish at this rate.
Philippe" Yes, we will. We will finish.
Albert: No, we’re not! We’re not! We’re all gonna get caught and go to jail. And I don’t want to go to jail. And the rigging isn’t safe. I’m not gonna watch you fall. I’m leaving, okay. I quit.
Philippe: Okay, Albert, listen to me. Yes, I agree with you, okay? And if the rigging is not done by daylight and if the rigging is not safe, then I’ll give up.

Philippe [voiceover]: And that was the moment in my adventure I call, “The Mysterious Visitor.” I have no idea who he is. I’ve never seen him again. And I can only imagine what he must have thought.[/b]

Weird doesn’t even begin to describe it.

[b]Philippe [just before beginning his walk]: I lost my costume! It’s a tragedy! The biggest page of my life and I lose my costume! It falls off the edge! I have no costume!
Jeff: What should we do?
Philippe: We do it. We do it anyway. I walk in this ridiculous undershirt, but we do it.

Philippe [voiceover]: I have one foot on the building and one foot on the wire. And the outside world starts to disappear. Jeff no longer existed. My tower was deserted. I no longer heard the sounds of New York. Everything fell silent. All I could see was the wire, floating out in a straight line to infinity.

Philippe [voiceover]: As soon as my entire weight is on the cable, I feel immediately a feeling I know by heart. I feel the wire supporting me. I feel the towers supporting the wire.

Philippe [voiceover]: I approach the first cavaletti, and it’s upside down. But I look closer and it seems okay. Thank you, Papa Rudy, for suggesting the three bolts.

Philippe [voiceover]: I arrive at the North Tower feeling the most intense joy, the most profound satisfaction I’ve ever felt in my life.

Philippe [voiceover]: I had finished my crossing, the coup was over. But then I looked over at the South Tower and it was still calling to me. So I’m thinking, maybe I should get back on my wire.

Philippe [voiceover on his way back to the South Tower]: And then I feel something that maybe I’ve never truly felt before. I feel thankful. So, I get down on one knee and I salute. First, I salute the wire, then the towers, and then I salute the great city of New York.[/b]

Then he sees the two cops. Back to the North Tower.

Philippe [voiceover]: By now, I’m becoming aware of the people on the ground below, watching me. My audience. And even though this is something a wire walker should never do, I look down. And it was…It was peaceful. It was calm and serene. Not dangerous.

What he does next is, well, mind-boggling.

Albert [looking up at the towers]: Look at that. I mean, we did it, Philippe. We showed the world that anything’s possible. They’re different. Hey, Philippe, they’re different now. They’re different because you walked up there.
Barry: You know every New Yorker I talk to now says they love these towers?

Well, not everyone, right?

Philippe[voiceover]: You remember Guy Tozzoli from the press conference, one of the men behind the creation of towers, he loved the walk, and he gave me a pass to the observation deck, so I could go any time I wanted. And I went there many times, alone. I would find myself there looking at the void, to see how the thought comes back. How the feeling returns. Because it was a beautiful day. And you know this pass I was given?
[holding up the card]
Philippe Well, these passes they have a date on them. A date when they expire. But on my pass, Mr. Tozzoli, he crossed out the date and he wrote on it: FOREVER.

From what I understand, there is a NASA mission to Mars in the planning stages: theage.com.au/world/want-to- … n0r07.html

You can even apply to be one of the astronauts. On the other hand, there are also reports that if you are among those selected don’t ever expect to come back: cbsnews.com/news/a-one-way-trip-to-mars/

Still, in Hollywood this sort of obstacle is easily dealt with. In what they call “the script”. Also, in Hollywood all of the astronauts are invariably young and quite attractive. And nearly all white. No exception here.

Basically, you might think of this as MacGyver on Mars. One man is up shit’s creek and even with a paddle he will almost certainly not survive. So he has to use his ingenuity to beat the extremely long odds. Luckily [unlike MacGyver] Mark has about billion things at his disposal in which to improvise with. On the other hand, MacGyver wasn’t on Mars.

Bottom line? There’s almost nothing that this guy can’t do. He even resurects Pathfiner.

Then there’s the part that revolves around the “space industrial complex”. The part about the politics of money. One really has to be grateful that it is brought up at all. Still, this film really revolves around a “predicament”: what is “mankind” obligated to do in order to save the life of just one “man”. That sort of moral quandary:

[i]Ng: We either have a high chance of killing one person or a low chance of killing six people.
Mitch: It should be Commander Lewis’ call.
Sanders: We still have a chance to bring five astronauts home safe and sound. I’m not risking their lives.
Mitch: Let them make that decision.
Sanders: Mitch, we’re going with option one.
Mitch: You goddamn coward.
[/i]

So, how realistic is the science here? It’s said to be reasonably so. And this is down the road from the things that we know today. So the assumption is that we’ll know a lot more then. But: How realistic is the plot? Well, if you haven’t seen the film, you don’t want to know.

Hint: It’s preposterous.

On the other hand: As though I could know that.

One of those strange films in which, from start to finish, everything is entirely predictable. And yet somehow the whole is able to become more than the sum of its parts.

IMDb

[b]It’s never addressed in the movie how Watney navigates without a GPS or compass (Mars has no magnetic field, making a compass useless). In the book, he uses the quick passage of the moon Phobos to orient himself.

In the beginning, it is mentioned that a compromised space suit would cause decompression, giving someone about a minute to live. This is scientifically correct; contrary to popular belief, acute decompression in space or a planet with very low pressure like Mars does not cause the body to immediately explode or expand. Major effects include confusion, loss of consciousness and some subdermal bleeding, but it is generally agreed that a healthy human body can survive one minute in vacuum without life-threatening consequences.

The suits in the film use a very complex and actual functioning lighting system.

One of Mars’s panoramic shots shows Olympus Mons, the largest discovered volcano in the solar system. It is almost three times larger than Mount Everest and covers an area about the size of Missouri.

The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages 600 Pa (0.087 psi), about 0.6% of Earth’s mean sea level pressure of 100 kPa (14.69 psi). It is so low that a “fierce storm”, as they put it, would be something akin to a very light breeze messing up your hair. Author Andy Weir admitted this was his biggest inaccuracy in the story. Due to the low air density sound would not travel like it does on Earth and you would have to stand next to someone and scream for them to hear you, providing you could survive the freezing cold temperature, poisonous atmosphere and lack of pressure.

A real potato farm was installed on the studio lot with potatoes in all stages of growth so they could be used for filming.[/b]

All the rest of the trivia: imdb.com/title/tt3659388/tri … =ttqu_sa_1

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt3659388/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ue4PCI0NamI

THE MARTIAN [2015]
Directed by Ridley Scott

[b]Melissa: All right team, stay in sight of each other. Let’s make NASA proud today.
Martinez: How’s it looking over there, Watney?
Mark: Well, you will be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominately coarse but in 29, they’re much finer and they should be ideal for chem analysis.
Martinez: Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt.

Sanders: At around 4:30 a.m. Central Standard Time our satellites detected a storm approaching the Ares 3 mission site on Mars. At 6:45, the storm had escalated to severe and we had no choice but to abort the mission. Thanks to the quick action of Commander Lewis astronauts Beck, Johanssen, Martinez and Vogel were all able to reach the Mars Ascent Vehicle and perform an emergency launch at 7:28 Central Time. Unfortunately, during the evacuation astronaut Mark Watney was struck by debris and killed.[/b]

Or, sure, maybe not…

[b]Mark [recording a message]: Hello, this is Mark Watney, astronaut. I’m entering this log for the record in case I don’t make it. It is 06:53 on Sol 19 and I’m alive. Obviously. But I’m guessing that’s gonna come as a surprise to my crewmates and to NASA.

Mark [recording a message]: I have no way to contact NASA. And even if I could, it’s gonna be four years until a manned mission can reach me. And I’m in a Hab designed to last 31 days. If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the hab breaches, I’ll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

Mark [recording a message]: Right, let’s do the math. Our surface mission here was supposed to last 31 sols. For redundancy, they sent 68 sols worth of food. That’s for 6 people. So for just me, that’s gonna last 300 sols… which I figure I can stretch to 400 if I ration. So I got to figure out a way to grow three years’ worth of food here. On a planet where nothing grows.

Mark [recording a message]: The problem is water. I have created 126 square meters of soil. But every cubic meter of soil requires 40 liters of water to be farmable. So I gotta make a lot more water.

Mark: So, yeah, I blew myself up. Best guess…I forgot to account for the excess oxygen that I’ve been exhaling when I did my calculations. Because I’m stupid.

Sanders: It’s not about the satellite time, Vince. We’re a public domain organization. We need to be transparent on this. The second we point the satellites at the Hab…I broadcast pictures of Mark Watney’s dead body to the world.
Vincent: You’re afraid of a PR problem?
Sanders: Of course I’m afraid of a PR problem.
Vincent: Another mission?
Sanders: Congress won’t reimburse us for a paper clip if I put a dead astronaut on the front page of The Washington Post.

Annie: I mean, what are we gonna say, “Dear America, remember that astronaut we killed and had a really nice funeral for? Turns out he’s alive and we left him on Mars. Our bad. Sincerely, NASA”. I mean, do you realize the shit storm that is about to hit us?

Sanders: If my math is right, he’s going to starve to death long before we can help him.
Vincent: Can you imagine what he’s going through up there? He’s 50 million miles away from home. He thinks he’s totally alone. He thinks we gave up on him. What does that do to a man, psychologically? What the hell is he thinking right now?[/b]

This: Fuck Disco!

[b]Mark [recording]: In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option, I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.

Mark [to the camera]: So here’s the rub. Somehow we have to have complex astrophysical engineering conversations using nothing but a still-frame camera from 1996. Luckily the camera does spin. So I can make an alphabet. It can’t be our alphabet. 26 characters plus a question card into 360 gives us 13 degrees of arc. That’s way too narrow. I’d never know what the camera was pointing at. Hexadecimals. Hexadecimals to the rescue.[/b]

Got that? You either have more than just a remoste understanding of the science here or you don’t.

[b]Mark [typing]: “How’s the crew? What did they say when they found out I was alive?”
Ng: Just tell him.
Vincent [typing]: “We haven’t told the crew you are alive yet. We need them to concentrate on their mission.”
Mark [aloud to himself]: What the fuck? What the fuck?
Mark [typing] “They don’t know I’m alive? What the fuck? WEhat the fuck is wrong with you?”
Vincent [typing]: “Mark, please watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcast live all over the world.”

Annie [to Vincent]: What is he doing? I asked for a photo, and what, he’s The Fonz?

Martinez [communicating – faceteously – to Mark]: “Dear Mark…Apparently NASA’s letting us talk to you now. And I drew the short straw. Sorry we left you behind on Mars. But we just don’t like you. Also, it’s a lot roomier on the Hermes without you. We have to take turns doing your tasks. But, I mean, it’s only botany. It’s not real science.”

Ng: All right. Thanks to my uncle Tommy in China, we get another chance at this.

Melissa: This is something NASA expressly rejected. We’re talking about mutiny here, which is not a word that I take lightly. So we do this together or not at all. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die. If we do everything perfectly we add 533 days to our mission. 533 more days before we see our families again. 533 days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. If it’s mission critical, we die.[/b]

Time to consult the script. You know, to see if the heroes survive.

[b]Flight: Who the hell is Rich Purnell?
Beth: I dunno.
Flight: Will somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is?

[b]Mitch: Whoever gave them the maneuver only passed along information. Crew made the decision on their own.
Sanders: You may have killed them, Mitch. We’re fighting the same war. Every time something goes wrong, the world forgets why we fly. I’m trying to keep us airborne. It’s bigger than one person.
Mitch: No. It’s not.
Sanders: When this is over, I’ll expect your resignation.

Mark [recording]: So, I’ve got 200 sols to figure out how to take everything here that’s keeping me alive the oxygenator, the water reclaimer, the atmospheric regulator bring that all with me. And luckily, I have the greatest mindson Planet Earth really, all of the brainpower on the entire planet helping me with this endeavor. And so far they’ve come up with is “Hey, why don’t you drill holes on the roof of your Rover and hit it as hard as you can with a rock?”

Mark [recording]: I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars. There’s an international treaty saying that no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. By another treaty if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law aplies. So Mars is international waters. Now, NASA is an American non-military organization, it owns the Hab. But the second I walk outside I’m in international waters. So Here’s the cool part. I’m about to leave for the Schiaparelli Crater where I’m going to commandeer the Ares IV lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m on board the Ares IV. So I’m going to be taking a craft over in international waters without permission, which by definition makes me a pirate. Mark Watney…space pirate.

Mark [recording]: Everywhere I go, I’m the first. It’s a strange feeling. Step outside the Rover…first guy to be there. Climb that hill, first guy to do that. Four and a half billion years nobody here. And now, me. I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet.

Vincent: You want to send a man into space without the front of his ship?
Ng: Well, no. We’re gonna have him cover it with Hab canvas. Look, the hull’s mostly there to keep the air in.Mars’ atmosphere is so thin, you don’t need a lot of streamlining. By the time the ship’s going fast enough for air resistance to matter it’ll be high enough that there’s practically no air.
Vincent: You wanna send him into space under a tarp.
Ng: Yes.

Mark [recording, after hearing he has to take the top off of the Mars Ascent Vehicle]: I know what they’re doing. I know exactly what they’re doing. They just keep repeating “go faster than any man in the history of space travel”, like that’s a good thing. Like it’ll distract me from how insane their plan is. Yeah, I get to go faster than any man in the history of space travel, because you’re launching me in a convertible. Actually it’s worse than that, because I won’t even be able to control the thing. And by the way, physicists, when describing things like acceleration do not use the word “fast”. So they’re only doing that in the hopes that I won’t raise any objections to this lunacy, because I like the way “fastest man in the history of space travel” sounds. I do like the way it sounds… I mean, I like it a lot.
[pauses]
Mark: But I’m not gonna tell them that.

Beth: If something goes wrong, what can Mission Control do?
Vincent: Not a damn thing. It’s all happening 12 light-minutes away which means it takes 24 minutes for them to get the answer to any question they ask. The whole launch is 12 minutes so they’re on their own.

Mark: Commander…I can’t let you go through with this. I am prepared to cut the suit.
Melissa: Absolutely not.
Mark: See, the thing is, I’m selfish. I want all the memorials back home to be about me. Just me.
Melissa: I should have left this guy on Mars.

Mark [to the cadets]: Welcome to the Astronaut Candidate Program. Now pay attention, because this could save your life. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

Mark [to the cadets]: Alright, let me get a few things out of the way, right off the bat. Yes, I did in fact survive on a deserted planet by farming in my own shit. Yes, it’s actually worse than it sound. So, let’s not talk about that ever again.

Mark: Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.[/b]

There are small towns and then there are small rural towns. Out there the intrigue is almost always more…ominous.

And then out of the blue the man from the Big City returns to the small town to play a bit part in this intrigue.

The film more or less opens with John dragging a dead body out into a quarry. He intends to burn it. It’s the body of the town bully. Dutch Miller. Dutch had become a born again Christian. And he decided to trek through this small rural town knocking on doors. His aim being to ask the folks whose lives he had made a living hell for forgiveness.

Let’s just say that for some [like Uncle John] it was too little, too late.

So, your reaction to what unfolds here is going to be embedded in part on just how you feel about bullies.

Then there’s plot number two. This one unfolds in the Big City [Chicago]. Ben is in advertising. He meets the beautiful Kate. And that’s about it.

Now, the first thing that will [eventually] pop into your head is this: What on earth do these two storylines actually have to do with each other? Other then both involving Ben. You keep expecting them to merge somehow. And then when they really don’t you can wrack your brain trying to come up with the point of it all.

As one reviewer put it:

When it cuts to Ben and Kate’s story however, the entire movie loses it’s momentum and feel each time. A screeching halt. It is like switching back and forth between a well crafted indie film and a bad made for TV movie.

My guess was the manner in which Ben’s and Kate’s sense of reality is juxtaposed to the reality of John. Like when the two of them are in bed making love while John is strangling Danny to death. Or when they are exchanging small talk while John is burning the body.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_John_(film
trailer: youtu.be/fbr-imUdtBw

UNCLE JOHN [2015]
Written in part and directed by Steven Piet

John [on the phone]: Dale, John. Say, I’m going to be burning some stuff over at the quarry today. I just don’t want you two worrying and come rushing over again.

The body in other words.

[b]Dale: John, hey, are you all right?
John: What?
Dale: Your leg…is it bleeding?

Carl [to the gang at lunch after the discussion turns to the missing Dutch]: He burned down Merlin’s barn.
Friend: What?
Carl: Fifteen years ago he got drunk and burned down Merlin’s barn.
Friend: Carl, what in the hell are you talking about.
Friend: He burnt down your brother’s barn?
Carl [nodding]: Yeah, yeah. He drove by the other day to tell him. Said he was really sorry and all. Said he saw Hell and was really sorry.

Friend: Was he out to see you, John?
John: No. I haven’t talked to Dutch in years now.
Friend: You know, all the stories. You know…People always said he was with Deedee. You know…

John: You know, maybe he just took off or something. Dodging somebody.
Danny [Dutch’s brother]: Yeah. Plenty of reason for that lately. I’ve never seen a guy so upset in my entire life. That vision, or whatever, scared the shit out of him.
John: Yeah, I heard about that.
Danny: You know, he had quite a bit to say to a few people. Did he come to see you the other evening?

Danny: You know, I’m sitting here becasue this is where they found his truck. I figure this is where he bought it. And they say from time to time that the killer will come back to the scene of the crime. So the past few evenings I’ve just been sitting here…and seeing who drives by.
John: Well, this is a pretty busy road Danny. You must have seen a lot of people passing by.
Danny [after a pause]: Oh, yeah. Quite a few.

Sheriff: I wanted to come by though and give you a heads up.
John: Heads up?
Sheriff: Yeah. When we had Danny in the squad car, he was going on about how he thinks that Dutch was murdered.
John: Is that right?
Sheriff: I don’t know, but he certainly has himself convinced. And somehow or another he’s naming you on the list too, John.
John: Me? How’s that?

Sheriff [to John]: I guess Dutch’s power of prayer didn’t stop his bullying though.

Danny: Did my brother ever come to see you?
John: You already asked me that, Danny. I already told you, I hadn’t seen him in quite a while.
Danny: Yeah, I know but it’s just that he was beating himself up and wanted to come and talk to you about that last night he spent with Deedee. I know that I wasn’t ready for it when he told me. I just never thought that she woud do that to herself.
[John looking grim and unconfortable]
Danny: I guess she was feeling suffocated being a mom?
[John looking grimer]
Danny: She begged him to leave with her. And they were pretty deep in the drink up there. He said that he wasn’t leaving…so she just jumped.

Kate: How about you, do you have any crazies in your family?
Ben: Actually, I don’t really have a lot of family. It’s just me and Uncle John.
Kate: Really? Does he get mad or have a drinking problem or something?
Ben: Nah. He’s the best.

Sheriff [with Danny’s body burning in the fire at the quarry]: I wanted to come by and check on you real quick and see if you’ve seen Danny Miller around here anytime lately.
John: No…
Sheriff: Okay, but keep an eye out. We found his truck over at Scoobs this morning…a big old handgun sitting on the seat. We got everyone out looking for him and I just wanted to make sure that you were safe. You might want to take some extra precautions.
[the sheriff looks over at the big bonfire]
Sheriff: Sure is a healthy one. [/b]

A film that explores what can happen in a relationship when one of you has been battered by an event that changes you forever. In other words, there is how you react to the world around you [and the people in it] before and after. And, then, how others try to adjust to that more or less successfully.

Catherine’s beloved father has just died. And her boyfriend has just ditched her for another woman.

So she decides to retreat from the world with a friend. Or, rather, what passes for a friendship between them. Among other things, it’s an intensely surreal smorgasbord of emotions.

This is a film where you imagine yourself reacting viscerally to the characters on the screen. Catherine in particular. You’re thinking about what you might have said to her instead. How you might have created a path that she could go down in order to suffer less. But you’re always on pins and needles. And that’s because your good intentions are not always enough. You say what you think is the right thing and it turns out to be the wrong thing instead.

It also explores how the most traumatic events in our lives can bleed into events of considerably less import…and then swallow them whole. More than anything it’s a psychological horror story. You’ve either been there or you haven’t.

Now, it’s not like these things happen all the time. But they happen enough to make you wonder why there are still any relationships left at all.

This is a really, really good movie. As soon as it was over I watched it again.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Earth
trailer: youtu.be/lzPgN8eEI-c

QUEEN OF EARTH [2015]
Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry

[b]Catherine: Why are you doing this to me?
James: I can’t explain it.
Catherine: You can explain. You can explain it. You will explain it.
James: No, I can’t.

Catherine: How could you do this so soon after the accident?
James: It wasn’t an accident, Catherine. It was on purpose. And beside, this over-reliance has been suffocating.
Catherine: How soon after did you start seeing her?
James: That’s a ridiculous question.
Catherine: Well, answer it.
James: Before.
Catherine: Before…
[she shakes her head in disbelief]
Catherine: Before?!!!

Catherine [to James]: My father was my life, my family was my life. And you were a part of both. And now I hate you. I hate you you dishonest snake!

James: Don’t you think we’ve got to a place where we rely on each other too much for it to be healthy?
Catherine [bitterly]: Do not try to justify this as some sort of effort to help or save me, like you’re doing me a fucking favor. Like I should thank you.
James: It’s not unture.
Catherine [weeping in despair]: No, it’s not untrue. Just go…just go…just go. I don’t want you to see me like this…Just leave me alone…GO!!![/b]

A really powerful scene.

[b]Catherine: Everything feels close to me, the good and the bad.
Virginia: Well, things aren’t so bad right now.
Catherine: No. You’re absolutely right, Virginia. They’re worse. They’re much, much worse.

Catherine [to Virginia]: He must have really suffered, my father. He was afflicted. People say that depression is a sickness, but I never thought of it that way. I always just thought of it as one of his problems, just like work or money are problems, you know? Now that he’s gone, it’s all I can think about.

Catherine [after getting off the phone]: Don’t ask.
Virginia: Was that James?
Catherine: Does “don’t ask” mean something different where you’re from?

Virginia: What’s it like having all the answers all the time to everything? It must be such a luxury.
Catherine [sarcastically]: It is, immeasurably.
Virginia: Please don’t do this. I mean, it’s not the end of the world, but could you at least acknowledge that you never stopped to think about what I might have wanted from this trip?
Catherine: Are you calling me a lousy friend?
Virginia: Are you saying you’re a lousy friend?
Catherine: I don’t know what you want me to say. I love you more than anything you stupid brat.
Virginia: Well, we should trade places. See how we feel then.

Virginia: Please don’t talk to me like that.
Catherine: Like what?
Virginia: Like your superior to me or to anyone.
Catherine: Why not?
Virginia: Um, because it’s dull. It’s uninteresting.

Virginia: I think I was made to be a member of the modern aristocracy.
Catherine: What does that mean?
Virginia: Um, because I have this great house.
Catherine: It’s your parents house which they let you use occasionally. You didn’t earn it, so don’t act like you’re entitled to it.
Virginia: Why are you being so confrontational?
Catherine: I’m just being realistic.
Virginia: I’m serious. I just want to have a nice time and relax.
Catherine: As opposed to what, relaxing every other day of your life?
Virginia [explosively]: I DON’T RELAX EVERYDAY!
Catherine: I’m sorry, you had one bad thing happen to you 3 months ago. Don’t pretend that it is some break from a tedious and stressful existence.
Virginia: You know what, don’t worry about me.
Catherine: I’m not.
Virginia: Don’t think about me. Just forget it.

Catherine [to Virginia but more to herself]: Then it hit me…it hit me that he was doing the exact same thing as before and I was too stupid to realize it before it was too late. And I knew that my problem, this problem that I have, is this issue that keeps landing me in the same place. Almost three years later and I was in the exact same place…I thought it was something real but it wasn’t, it was just trite and cliched and fatuous. It was just completely empty and hollow.
Virginia: It’s one of the worst tendencies of human nature to assume the best of others.[/b]

And then we learn about Chad.

[b]Virginia: I just wanted to finally purge all of that out of my life. I had already cut out so many worthless and negative people who brought me nothing but annoyance or distraction, so I figured why should she be any different.
Catherine: Becasue family is different.
Virginia: No, they aren’t. Nobody gets a free pass.
Catherine: That’s a horrible thing to say.
Virginia: It’s a horrible thing to feel. I wish I didn’t feel it. I wish I could have relationships with some people who I can’t, but once they become just ciphers or, you know, energy drains, or they become someone who depresses me, I have to have nothing to do with them…I love eliminating those enemies from every aspect of my life.
Catherine: I don’t think I’ve ever heard an adult use the word “enemy”.
Virginia: Aw, don’t be naive. It’s the only word.

Cartherine: I know everyone said that everything I got was from nepotism, but I didn’t really care. I don’t care. I just thought he was not only my father, but I admired him for being a great artist. A cliched, tortured, suicidal artist ultimately.
Virginia: I think Rich is coming by later.
Catherine: Hmm…
Virginia: What?
Catherine: I literally didn’t say anything.
Virginia: Exactly.

Catherine [ironically]: I love Rich. He’s fascinating.
Virginia: Come on.
Catherine: Well, I just don’t think he is good enough for you. I think he’s just like everybody else.
Virginia: How do you mean?
Catherine: Just prying into people’s business. Last year he didn’t ask two questions and now he wants to know everything about me.
Virginia: He just knows you better.
Catherine: He doesn’t know me at all.
Virginia: He’s curious.
Catherine: Well, curiosity killed my father.
Virginia: Depression killed your father.

Catherine [to Virginia]: How much of that did you see?

Virginia: It’s fascinating. I feel like I’m…seeing you for the first time.
Catherine: What do you mean?
Virginia: I always thought you were so perfect. I thought you had it all figured out. But you were just surrounding yourself with men. With James, with your father. They took care of you. Without them…here you are.

Catherine: I think the best hope for me now is to not end up like my father.
Virginia: How’s that going?
Catherine [seeming to mull it over]: Mm…touch and go.
[pause]
Catherine: I just don’t really feel like I exist anymore. And that the only two people who ever cared about me abandoned me.
Virginia: I care about you.
Catherine: No, you don’t.

Virginia: Face thing?
Catherine: Yeah. It hurts to talk.
Virginia: All of a sudden?
Catherine: Comes and goes.
Virginia: Do you realize how fake that sounds?
Catherine: Do you realize how insulting that is?
Virginia: Just trying to understand.
Catherine: No, you’re trying to judge.

Virginia: Cartherine. I know.
Catherine [giggling]: You know…

Catherine [to Rich]: How dare you. Who the hell are you to come here and speak to me that way? I don’t even know you. How dare you speak to me like that. You fucking animal. You unrepentant piece of shit. You click your tongue and you revel in the affairs of others. You are worthless. You don’t know anything about me. You show up to fuck my best friend, and you pry into the lives of others to conceal how worthless and boring your own life is. I don’t deserve this. I just want to be left alone. I want to be left alone with the few people who are left in this world who are decent.
[Catherine glances briefly at Virginia before reverting back to Rich]
Catherine: You are weak and greedy and selfish, and you are the root of every problem. You are why people betray one another. You are why there is nowhere safe or happy anymore. You are why depression exists. You are why there is no escape from indecency and gossip and lies. You, Rich, you are why my father had to die. Because he couldn’t live in a world like this. [/b]

I second that. Unequivocally.

Six tales of [what else] revenge.

After all, the revenge plot has always been one of the most persistent themes in the history of film. This one comes from Argentina, but it might just as well have come from, say, any other nation on earth.

People do things that piss us off. Lots and lots of things, lots and lots of time. For example, if you are actually out and about interacting with them. And even here online we encounter any number of folks that we would like to, well, you know.

Still, that so few of us will act on what we feel we are justified in doing is why films such as this are so popular. Here of course we can at least project our own outrage at the bastards vicariously by identifying with the characters on the screen

And, thus, any adverse consequences [the part about violence for example] can be obviated merely by pushing the stop button. Let the actors take the blows for us.

On the other hand, this film is tagged as a “comedy”. A “black comedy”, as they say. A darkly comedic exploration into “modern rage”. Modern in the sense that capitalism creates any number of contexts in which folks, hanging on by a thread, feel compelled to…vent. Almost all of us will recognize a set of circumstances here that we are more or less familiar with ourselves. It’s just that not all of us have either the aptitude, the guts or the options necessary to exact the payback that the slimeballs deserve.

But let’s be honest. What wouldn’t some of us do if we knew we could get away with it?

Look for the law of unintended consequences. And the ubiquitous stench of class.

It’s not for nothing this film got a 95% fresh rating on 133 reviews at RT. Nor that it was nominated for an academy award as the Best Foreign Film. It’s nothing short of a gem.

IMDb

[b]The site of the bridge, in which the tale “The Strongest” was filmed, is actually the 60th kilometer on the route between Cafayate and Salta, as the character in the tale mentions. This place has become a kind of a tourist attraction nowadays, as can be seen in Google Street View at coordinates (-25.730669,-65.6967926).

During the credits at the beginning, each main actor of each tale is identified with a wild animal. In the director’s case, it is a fox. Szifrón said that this was because his father had liked foxes a lot, and had used to watch lots of documentaries about them. He also felt identified with that picture, more specifically with the fox’s gaze, as the job of a director is in the gaze.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Tales_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8YucoK8A-sU

Wild Tales [Relatos Salvajes] 2014
Written and directed by Damián Szifrón

“Pasternak”

Music critic: Does anyone else here know Gabriel Pasternak?

Everyone on the plane raises his or her hand.

[b]Stewardess: Gabriel Pasternak is the cabin chief on this flight…Ater takeoff, he brought coffee to the cockpit. The door is locked, the pilots won’t annswer. I’m desparate! I don’t know what to do!

[b]Isabel: I cheated on him with his best friend.
[she points to a man on the plane]
Isabel: Him!

Victor: [pounding on the cabin door]: Gabriel! Gabriel, it’s me, Victor. Talk to me please!
Man: Who are you?
Victor: I was his psychiatrist for years. Then I raised my fees. He got mad and stopped seeing me. [/b]

You guessed it: they’re all going to die!

“The Rats”

[b]Moza [a waitress]: Good evening, a table for one?
Cuenca: I see you’re good at math.

Cook: Did he order?
Moza: That guy’s from my hometown. He’s a loan-shark, a gangster. He auctioned our house. Because of him my father killed himself. Two weeks after the funeral, he tried to seduce my mom. Do you know how many times I dreamed of having him in front of me? I’m going to say something to him.
Cook: Your dad kills himself because of this guy and you’re just going to insult him? Let’s put rat poison in his food. A good dose and his heart will blow out in five minutes.

Moza: You did it. You put poison in his food.
Cook: Don’t be naive, as if you hadn’t noticed. That’s our country. Everyone wants these corrupt guys to get what they desrve, but no one is willing to lift a finger.

Moza: We have to do something. They’re both eating.
Cook: Add more poison?
Moza: He’s just a kid!
Cook: But he’ll grow up. Like father, like son. We’d better wipe out the whole family tree.[/b]

“The Stongest”

Diego [a luxury car driver to a driver in a heap who wouldn’t let him pass]: You motherfucking redneck! Asshole!

Then he gets the inevitable flat tire. Out in the middle of nowhere of course.

Heap driver: What was it that you called me, back there?
Diego: I already apologized. What more do you want?!

Doesn’t work. The guy jumps up on the hood of his car and literally takes a shit on the windshield. Then a piss. Being the strongest as it were. Think of it as the class struggle in minature. You won’t believe what comes next. Road rage taken to a whole other level.

Cop: What’s your theory, sheriff? Crime of passion?

This segment alone is worth the price of admission. A masterpiece of cinema.

“Little Bomb”

[b]Simon [after his car has been towed away]: I’m trying to explain. The curb wasn’t painted yellow. There was no way of knowing it was a no-parking zone.
Clerk: I understand. If you want your car back, you have to pay the towing fee.
Simon: No. Let’s do something else. Go and talk to whoever you need to. I want to leave with my car without paying a penny. And I want a refund for the cab. And I want an apology.
[the clerk starts laughing]
Simon: Why are you laughing? I’m serious. Where is the office where apologies are made?

Simon: You know you are a criminal.
Clerk: I’m just doing my job.
Simon: No, people who work for criminals are criminals too.
Clerk: That’s you’re opinion.
Simon: Just a miserable slave to this corrupt system.

Wife: You missed your daughter’s birthday!
Simon: You make it sound so easy. I’m tired of being robbed! The curb was not painted yellow! Do you have any idea how furious that makes me?
Wife: Do you have any idea how furious it makes me that you always have some excuse. That you blame society for everything!

Colleague [to Simon]: The government allows a company to rake in big bucks from these fines. Obviously, our elected officials get their cut. It’s outrageous, but that’s how it is. You have two options: pay and relax…or give yourself a heart attack.[/b[

Actually, there’s a third option. Well, after he gets out of jail.[/b]

“The Proposal”

Santiago: Papa. Papa, wake up.
Father: What happened?
Mama: What happened, Santiago? Say something!

This happened:

[b]Newsman: Right on Lebertador Avenue a driver struck a pregnant woman and drove off. The driver did not stop to help the woman…Unfortunately, we have just been informed that in the ambulance heading to the hospital, both the woman and her unborn child passed away.

Santiago [bawling on the floor]: What have I done? What have I done?
Father [enraged]: What have you done? You ruined our lives, you asshole!

Father: I’m really embarrassed to make this proposal but we’ve known each other for years and I feel we have this kind of bond.
[the goundskeeper Jose nods]
Father: Besides, you’re a father. I know you want what is best for your kids…So I think this arrangement may be good for you too. If you say you took the car for a drive last night while we were sleeping…and that you were driving at the time of the accident, I’ll hire the best lawyer…
[he indicates his attorney in the room]
Father: …to get you the shortest possible sentence.
Lawyer [to Jose]: With good behavior, you’ll be out in a year and a half.
Father: And for doing me that huge favor, I’ll pay you $500,000. You couldn’t earn that in a lifetime and your family will be set for life.

Lawyer [to the father]: Do I have your permission to start negotiating?

Lawyer: The prosecutor is willing to make a deal, but it’s going to be expensive.
Father: How expensive.
Lawyer: One million:
Father: Dollars?!
Lawyer: Well, he saw your house, the way you live. He won’t take less than that. The good news is he will take care of everything – he knows the police chief, most of the judges and he’ll help us reinforce the alibi.
Father: The groundskeeper’s? Can’t we leave him out of it?
Lawyer: No, someone has got to be held responsible. Two people are dead. It’s all over the news.
Father: Fine, but I don’t know if I have that much cash. It’s 1.5 million dollars.
Lawyer: And then there’s my cut too…[/b]

Another 500,000 dollars.

[b]Santiago: Stop, Mom, it’s my life!
Mother: He wants to confess!
Santiago: It’s the right thing to do!
Mother: Say something, he has no idea what he’s doing!
Jose: Santiago, calm down. Your mother is right…we’ll fix this.

Father: You know what, guys? It’s over. The deal is off.
Lawyer: What do you mean, it’s off?
Father: It’s off! It’s over. No one gets anything. No more! Santiago! You said you wanted to confess. That’s perfect. Go out there and talk. I gave you the best education and you always did whatever you wanted. So now, go screw yourself![/b]

“Until Death Do Us Part”

[b]Romina: Who is that girl with the long hair?
Ariel: Which one?
Romina: The one over there. Your co-worker.

Romina: With all the cell phone companies and special deals out there this girl just happened to buy your guitar teacher’s phone line? Isn’t it an amazing coincidence? Answer me or I will ask her myself.
Ariel: Romi, please, don’t.
Romina: Don’t “Romi” me. Answer the question, Ariel. Does everyone at table 27 know that you fucked that girl?[/b]

And this is her wedding day.

Romina [up on the hotel roof]: I just found out my husband cheated on me with one of the wedding guests.
Chef [up on the roof for a smoke break]: If you love him, you’ll be able to forgive him.
Romia: I don’t know if I love him. I don’t know if he’s the one for me. He’s an asshole!
Chef: Well then to hell with him. And don’t worry about the guests. You’re not the first woman at that party to be cheated on. Plus, if you spend your time worrying about what other people think, you’re screwed, kiddo. Look, if I were you I’d go downstairs, move the party along, end it early, and then back at home tell him it is over. What happened to you is awful, I won’t deny it. But it is time to move on.

Instead, she comes up with an altogether different plan altogether.

Romina: Why don’t we use this break to cut the cake.

Trust me: You’ve never seen a wedding like this one. Even in the movies.

Ariel: Romina! Stop it. Let everyone go home. This isn’t a joke. My family’s lawyer even suggested I press charges against you.
Romina [looking over at Ariel’s mother]: Ah, don’t tell me this is all mommy’s idea.
Ariel: Romina, I mean it. Cut it out.
Romina: Your mama is a real…wedding planner.
Ariel: STOP IT!!! What did I do to you? It was nothing compared to what you’re doing to me!

He may be right. Not that the bastard doesn’t derserve it.

Doctor: You take care of him, I’ll take care of her.

Imagine your mother has just informed you that she has decided to “gender transition” into a man. Not only that but during this transition you are only to meet every Tuesday. From 4 to 10. And this at a time in your life – you are 16 years old – when you have begun to explore the world sexually yourself. “Experimenting” as it were. Doing things that others will insist is “child pornography”.

The good news here is that mother and father and daughter and son have always been open and honest with each other about everything. The bad news is that this doesn’t necessarily make the adjustment to this new reality any less problematic. Though it is considerably less problematic for them than one might imagine it being for many, many others.

But then there are the…complications.

And while I am not all that familiar with the history of sexual mores in Australia, I suspect that, as with much of the modern world, something like this would have been all but unthinkable not too many years ago. And yet we know in turn that there are millions upon million of men and women in the civilized world who still react to this sort of thing in the most uncivilized ways imaginable.

For them it is never going to be understood as just a “lifestyle” thing. Instead, among others things, it is thought to be morally repugnant and a sin against God.

The film also explores a common plight between parents and their children. It’s the rift that revolves around a loving family that begins to splinter when the child reaches that age where the peer group begins to compete with the family…and the family is no match for it.

Look for these tiny clips interspersed throughout the film. They depict any number of dire events that are unfolding across the globe. The idea being [I think] that compared to one woman becoming a man, there are many more important things more worth pondering about.

Me? Well, I can wrap my mind around a man wanting to become a woman, but for the life of me I simply cannot bring myself to imagine a woman wanting to be a man.

IMDb

Filmed over 52 consecutive Tuesdays with the non-profesional cast being given their scripts one week at a time.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52_Tuesdays
trailer: youtu.be/Y5WcMzEYRGU

52 TUESDAYS [2013]
Directed by Sophie Hyde

[b]Billie [to the camera]: Once upon a time I had a mom who told me everything. I knew about her lovers and her breakups. We’d go to these parties and I would notice these strangers flirting with her. I’d watch her life from under tables and would listen from my bed. We used to cuddle up and she would tell me her thoughts about the world.

Billie [to the camera]: In my family we made decisions together. I felt like an adult.

Billie: Tom’s been telling the biggest bunch of lies.
Mom: What do you mean?
Billie: He says that I am going to live with him full time now. I mean, I love dad and all but can you imagine that even for a little while? Mom? Mom? Mom, open the door.[/b]

Mom opens the door. Next shot: Billie packing to move in with dad.

[b]Mom: I can give you some phamphlets and books if you’d like. I’ll take hormones, I’ll…
Billie: Have you seen my cardigan? That new one?
Tom [dad]: She’s not listening.
Billie: No, I get it. You feel like a man. You wanna be a man.

Harry [the brother]: Has she told you yet?
Billie: You knew? Everyone knew except me.
Harry [to Billie]: She should just get a fucking strap-on.
[then to his mom]
Harry: GET A FUCKING STRAP-ON WOMAN!![/b]

Meanwhile, Harry is given to wearing his sister’s clothes. And using makeup.

[b]Harry [to Billie]: Until your mom has grown a bit more hair on her chest, she doesn’t want you around.

Billie: How long?
Harry: Yeah, for how long, brother?
Mom: Well, the surgery can happen in about nine months…the full effect of the testosterone can take years. It’s a long process.
Billie [more insistent]: How long?
Mom: With your dad?
Billie: Yeah.
Mom: A year. I was thinking a year.

Billie [to the camera]: My mom used to tell me how much of a drag it was breast feeding me. I was a hungry child. And I bit. But she would always tell me that she never loved anyone or anything more than she loved me then. I loved my mom. I wanted my mom to be happy.[/b]

So, its agreed: Every Tuesday for a year.

[b]Psychiatrist: So, for the moment becasue it’s under medicare, prior to the surgury being approved something called “real life experience” is required. Do you know about real life experience Billie?
Mom: Yes, I told her about that already.
Psychiatrist: Good, so you must understand that before we can prescribe hormones your mother must come to us for assessments. Now, I think this whole process should take about 2 to 3 months. And then after about six months we can look into surgery. Female to male chest reconstruction surgery. A Hysterectomy can follow if that’s what you want.
Billie: What’s a hysterectomy?
Mom: It’s where they take the uterus out.

Psychiatrist: Now I inderstanmd that you have taken a male name. What do you think about your mom’s new name, Billie?
[Billie doesn’t respond]
Psychiatrist: James is a lovely name. Hello James.

Billie: So, do I call you dad now?
Mom: Whatever you feel comfortable with.
[Billie thinks about it]
Billie. Dad. When will I see you next, dad? Dad. Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.

Mom: I don’t want to be with anyone yet.
Billie: When then?
Mom: When I’m a man.
Billie: I thought you were a man now.

Billie [to the camera]: Okay look at this…
[cut to a young woman speaking into the camera]
Woman: So whenever I meet someone with a trans-gender parent, one of the things that we often talk about is the amazing gift of knowing that our parent has chosen to live an authentic life.
Billie [to the camera]: What do you think about that? You know, what is an authentic life?
[long pause]
Billie [to the camera]: Is this an authentic life?

Harry: Here’s to bigger clits.

Mom: I got some pictures of guys off the internet. These are guys that like me were born biologically female…but they’ve taken testosterone.
[Billie looks at pictures of men that really look like men]
Billie: And that’s all from the testosterone?
Mom [nodding]: Yep.
Billie [amazed]: My God. You wouldn’t even know…

Billie [to Jasmine]: So, I can bite them but not lick them?

James [on the phone]: I’ve got to stop testosterone. It’s got something to do with overproduction with the enzymes.
Tom: So you’ve got to stop the treatments for good?
James: It’s…it’s apparently fucking rare but there have been other cases. I don’t know how to tell Billie.
Tom: Jesus…
James: Yeah, that was my first thought. How the fuck am I going to tell her?
Tom: She’s going to want to move back in with you. You know that, right?

Billie [to the camera]: I was always praised for my sophistication, my maturity, my ability to adapt. But it was never true. You just have no choice, do you?

Jasmine [to Harry]: Is your mom a lesbian or something?

Harry: What would you do if you didn’t have this glorious place I gave you? Where would you go? James is always at work at this time so he wouldn’t know a thing.
Jasmine: Who’s James?

James: What the fuck made you think that I would let her stay out to 12 on a school night? And have you even bothered to ask her what she’s been doing, because she won’t tell me. Are you even remotely worried? I mean this is our daughter we are talking about.
Tom: Every Tuesday, yes, I agree she is your daughter, but not at any other time. This is your idea remember? You need to fucking deal with it. For some reason I can only guess at you’ve chosen to be her mother 6 hours a week. That’s 24 hours a month. One day. So, for the last 6 months you have chosen to be her mother for 6 days. Is that about right?
[he takes Billie and starts walking away]
Tom: You have no say in it

James [to his lover Lisa]: There I was a lesbian, so cool. Then one night it was so simple. I dressed up. I put on men’s clothes, drew a beard and there I was. In the mirror I finally recognized myself and I was a beautiful man.

Lisa: Do you wish that you were born a man?
James: Yes.
Lisa: Then you wouldn’t have had Billie.

James: What exactly happened?
Principal: Well, Billie texted another girl, Jasmine Miller during class time, and Jasmine’s teacher happened to notice and he confiscated the phone. And he noticed that the message was a photograph of, uh, Billie in a state of nakedness.
James: Really?
Principal: Trust me when I tell you this is serious. I want to make it clear that if you are a minor, a naked photograph of yourself can be regarded as child pornography. Now normally I would bring it to the attention of the police straight away, but in this case I wanted to bring it to your attention first. Because a family like yours, in a unique situation, I wanted to make sure you knew the consequences.
Tom: A unique situation?
Principal: Well, I thinkk you have a more complicated view of life…a family like yours.
Tom: You mean separated?[/b]

Nope, she certainly doesn’t mean that.

[b]Tom: You’ve hardly said a word.
Billie: Please don’t ask me to.

James [handing Billie back her tape]: The stuff on this tape is dangerous.
Billie: It’s not what you think.
James: It doesn’t martter what I think, you shouldn’t have that stuff on there.
[they stare at each other]
James: You know what I should do…I should burn this. I should go through everything you own and burn it all.
Billie [vehemently]: If you do anything to that tape I will walk out the door and happily never speak to you again.
James: If this gets out. Please…
[she starts to destroy the tape]
Billie: Don’t you dare!
James: I’m sorry.
[she slaps her mother in face…her mother slaps her back…she punches her mother in the chest]

Billie [on a video message to Jasmine]: The earth’s population reached 7 billion and a sheet of ice the size of New York split off…there was the Arab Spring stuff and Occupy Wall Street and all that stuff in Egypt…and my mom became a man. All this stuff happened…important stuff…it happens all the time. But how do you know what really matters?

Harry: So, you got your fuck buddies back then?
Billie: I got rid of everything.
Harry: Kiddie porn free now are we?
Billie: Am I?[/b]

No peace. No pussy.

Aristophanes meet Spike Lee.

Never thought I’d ever be noting that. Just as you [no doubt] never thought that you’d hear it.

How about this: Iraq meet Chicago?

Two “fables” about gender interaction in the world that is [almost always] bursting at the seams with male violence.

So, it’s not really to be taken literally. But then the folks who create them want you to take the point of it seriously. The violence is there. And lots of people want to see it stopped.

But, come on, what are the odds that this particular “strategy” will ever be successful? Instead it remains just a device that allows the film maker to explore the violence itself.

Inevitably it touches on the dialogue [or the diatribes] exchanged between those who put the emphasis here on a racist, dysfunctional “society” and those who place it instead on the lack of “individual responsibility” within the black community itself: Wake up!

In any event the resolution – if there ever is one – will be political in nature. But that then brings us to the crux of the matter: how to get to there from here. And the opening scene in the club shows us right from the start just how far both “society” and the “black community” need to go.

For example, in a world where Donald Trump is the President of the United States.

Anyway, what is gangbanging but one more rendition of The Way. You create a narrative that you can anchor “I” to and suddenly your life becomes full of meaning. It’s a self-perpetuating mythology in which there is a place for everyone and everyone knows their place.

Basically, this one appeals and tugs at to your heart. It digs below the surface of our political economy and it connects a few dots. But when push comes to shove it’s really about shaming the gangbangers into changing their ways.

Like that has ever really worked before.

Look for it to jump the shark with General King Kong: What the fuck?!!! Fantasy becomes farce. Then what some will see as straight to la la land:

Mayor: Every Fortune 500 company has signed the peace accord ensuring that every person in the hoods of America of employment age is guaranteed a job. And I don’t mean no minimum age neither. New hospitals and mental health facilities will be built by the United States government. And finally, there will be a much needed trauma center on Chicago’s South Side.

IMDb

[b]Pronounced “shy-RACK”, the title is a portmanteau of “Iraq” and “Chicago”, used by South Side Chicago residents to refer to the area comparing it to a war zone due to its high crime rates. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t like the title and asked Spike Lee to change it, thinking it would hurt the city’s image.

“Wake up” is a popular tagline used throughout many of Spike Lee’s films, including “School Daze”. Samuel L. Jackson repeats “wake up” at the end of “Chi-Raq”, similarly to Laurence Fishburne in “School Daze”. Samuel L. Jackson appeared in the movie “School Daze” alongside Laurence Fishburne.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi-Raq
trailer: youtu.be/cA4gBeEPfww

CHI-RAQ [2015]
Written in part and directed by Spike Lee

[b]Title card: 2001 to present, 2,349 American deaths in the Afghanistan war. 2003 - 2011, 4,424 American deaths in the Iraqi war. 2001 - 2015, 7,356 murders in Chicago.

Voice of Father Michael Louis Pfleger: Homicides in Chicago, Illinois, over 400 school-aged kids have been shot this year. On the weekend of July 4th, 2015, American Independence Day, 55 people were shot and wounded and 10 were murdered, including a seven-year-old boy. Where was their freedom? Where was their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? These overwhelming numbers of homicides are committed by young black males against young black males. Heaven help us all. Put the guns down.

Dolmedes: In the year 411 BC… that’s before baby Jesus, y’all…the Greek Aristophanes penned a play satirizing his day. And in the style of his time, 'Stophanes made that shit rhyme. Transplanted today, we retain his verse to show our love for the universe. But warning! You gonna see some pain! But that’s only natural, 'cause it involves the gangs.

Lysistrata: What are you looking at?
Miss Helen: Nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Mother [after her 7 year old child had been gunned down]: You gonna get your day, Lysistrata. You and your damn boyfriend. You got what’s coming.
[to the crowd]
Mother: I want you to look at her. Look at her right there. That’s a seven…a little baby! A baby! A baby. I can’t take this no more.
Father Corridan: Your daughter’s in heaven.

Lysistrata: This nothing has nowhere to go.
Miss Helen: Welcome to my home. Come on in. Come in. Why don’t you move in with that boy of yours, Machine Gun Kelly?
Lysistrata:: Wouldn’t be safe.
Miss Helen: I suppose he’ll be gunning for who set that fire. Y’all make my tired ass tired. There are children here in Englewood. Does that mean anything to you? Running up the street, shooting and killing. Do you care at all?

Lysistrata: Where’s your flat-screen?
Miss Helen: Malcolm X once said the best way to hide something from Negroes is to put it in a book.

Miss Helen: There was a time in the summer when it got hot. Your child could go outside and play and not get shot.
Lysistrata: Oh, I don’t remember that time.
Miss Helen: It existed.
Lysistrata: I’m sorry, Miss Helen, but it’s a war zone out here now.
Miss Helen: The US spends money on the Iraqi people, to train them, govern them, help them build an economy… billions and billions in dollars. The Afghan people, too. They don’t do economic development like that here on the South Side. See, Americans like war. They like guns. Fun and games.
Lysistrata: Fun and games?
Miss Helen: Ask the parents at Sandy Hook. When they murder white babies and things don’t change, saving black life is way out of range.

Lysistrata: Everybody here got a man in the orange and purple colors, banging and slanging, fighting for the flag, risking that long zip of the cadaver bag.
Woman: It’s how we live.
Lysistrata: It’s how we die.

Father Corridan [to the congregation]: I’m gonna talk about a life today. An important life in our community. A life that ends life. The life of a gun. This gun began its professional career when it was purchased by Tiny Tony from Chicago at an Indiana gun show using a fake Indiana ID and bypassed all of our strict gun laws. Chicago gangs buy the guns for big money. Chicago gangs buy the guns for big money in the underground economy. The underground economy exists because banks and lending institutions rarely loan money to poor people. Their children, however, admire the thug life. But they do so from the safety of suburban Chicago! Kenilworth, Wilmette, Highland Park. This gun wouldn’t be caught dead there. This gun is the principal player in a reality TV urban murder show that can be seen every night at 5:00 and 10:00, every channel, on any news show you wanna watch. And that’s when this gun met our child Patti. Patti. Our Patti is gone because our politicians are in the pocket of the National Rifle Association! They have become their mouthpieces or silent co-conspirators! Patti is gone because of an economy that has abandoned the poor.

Father Carridan: Downtown they say unemployment is 5.7%. How’s that sound? Right here in Auburn Gresham, unemployment is 21%! And that doesn’t even count people who have given up hope and stopped looking for work. The per capita income is $12,000! 42% of us live below the poverty line. 30% don’t have a high school diploma. What America are they living in? We go from third-rate schools to first-class high-tech prisons. Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow! Our Patti is gone because gang members are more concerned with popping pills and popping bottles, more concerned with what’s on YouTube! More concerned with ego, street cred, and greed than a human life.

Father Carridan: Patti’s gone because guns have become a part of America’s wardrobe. Where it is easier to get a gun than a computer. Sirens and gunshots are our soundtrack. Yellow police tape, teddy bears, T-shirts, balloons… these are the national memorials of our neighborhoods.

Father Carridan: We need to say loud and clear, “You cannot murder our children!” You cannot murder our children, then go back to the crib, turn on “SportsCenter,” eat a Whopper and fries, and act like nothing ever happened. We will not allow this self-inflicted genocide to continue. We will not allow this self-inflicted genocide to continue!![/b]

Their fault. Our fault. But either way, praise God!

[b]Father Carridan: At first, I thought you were all insane. But on further review, as a man who’s taken a vow of celibacy, I know the power of the sexual appetite. I know this fruit is ripe. But understand, your ruse won’t bring a truce.
Lysistrata: Well, what will bring peace?
Father Carridan: How about a job? Affordable housing. A good education. Purpose, hope. There’s a lot of hate out there. A lot of self-hate. A lot of racial hate.

Police Commissioner Blades: Who do you think you are, Rosa Parks? What a damn farce.
Lysistrata: Yo, we in a hurry like a Ferguson or Staten Island jury.
Police Commissioner Blades: Those judgments were fair. Look, y’all, nobody cares.
Lysistrats: Trayvon Martin. Mike Brown. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Rekia Boyd and Freddie Gray. Black lives matter every day. Not just when you trigger-happy cops go astray. Dude, you think sister Sandra Bland hung herself? You kill us with impunity.
Police Commissioner Blades: You give them the opportunity.
Lysistrata: 'Cause we kill each other like flies, you rogue cops think you can capitalize.
Police Commissioner Blades: You thugs don’t care about each other, why should we?
Lysistrata: Thugs? Who the fuck you calling a thug? Because we are we. No matter what our problems are, we deserve respect.

Father Carridan: We need you and the Spartans to come down to the armory and join in the peach talks.
Chi-Raq: Fuck I care if these lames ain’t getting ass? Ain’t my task…Father, you know what I’ve always wanted to ask you? What a white boy like you doing all up in the E-Dub all these years?
Father Carridan: I grew up eight blocks from St. Sabina. When I took a vow to be a priest, it had to be in the streets 'cause Jesus rolled with the suffering and the poor. Imagine no more stray bullets killing innocent children like Patti no more.
Chi-Raq: Bullets ain’t got no name, no eyes.
Father Carridan: That’s right. They’re just designed to take lives. Like they’ll take yours soon, son. Three places you’re gonna end up…county morgue, county hospital or county jail. People downtown don’t give a fuck about you. You in the system. You in jail. And you won’t make bail. And it’s privatized now to capitalize. No more insurance card. No more family to feed. You hanging from a tree. You’re not even costing them money. You’re making them money. And nobody’s gonna hear your bitching 'cause this is a new legal form of lynching.

Miss Helen: One summer day back when we lived in the Cabrini-Green Projects, Pam was outside jumping double Dutch when they started shooting. She was shot through her left eye by a stray bullet. This was over 20 years ago. And children dying from stray bullets wasn’t a common occurrence like it is today. Days later, a young man came to my apartment and he begged my forgiveness. Then he confessed to the police. Back then it was a violation of the gang code to murder children. He knew. He knew if he didn’t confess to me and the police, that the gangs would end his life. That man was your father. Jamel.
Chi-Raq [sobbing]: Never knew him. Only heard stories. Got killed in prison when I was just a shorty.[/b]

Aside from those who climbed Mount Everest “because it’s there”, there may well be as many additional reasons as there are those men and women who have actually made it to the top.

Doug: I’m climbing Mount Everest because I can…because to be able to climb that high and see that kind of beauty that nobody ever sees, it’d be a crime not to.

Or, perhaps, more to the point here, the reasons of those who tried to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … nt_Everest

It has never been an inclination of mine to risk death in accomplishing something that one would do only in order to say that they accomplished it. Of course, I don’t believe in life after death so that will always be a factor in choosing not to do things like this.

On the other hand, what do I know of the extraordinary adrenaline rush that those who do accomplish these things often speak of – in awe. And the whole point here often revolves precisely around the fact that you risk death.

It’s trade off then. And some are willing to make it, while most are not.

Of course there are ways to get that adrenaline rush and have more measure of control. Like parachuting out of an airplane. Or bungee jumping. There is always the possibility of death here as well but considerably less so if you know what you are doing. On Everest though you are often at the mercy of the elements. Of the mountain itself. There is not much you can do to control a raging blizzard. Or an ice fall. Or an avalanche. So the risk of death climbing a mountain like Everest becomes considerably more problematic.

And then there are the ubermen who view the whole thing in terms of their ego — their manhood. Or the “my way or the highway” blokes that get others killed. And then there are the “amateurs”. They pay the experts tens of thousands of dollars to train them [over the course of 40 days] for the task. But they’re still no less tourists when push comes to shove.

And then the part where the closer they get to the top, the more risk that some are willing to take to make it all the way. And tragically the more risk of taking others with them.

And last but not least the moral conundrum – the part where conditions become so dire that some either are or are not tempted to start thinking along the lines of “every man for himself”.

IMDb

[b]On 18 April 2014, an avalanche on Everest killed 16 people, more than the 1996 disaster on which this movie is based. Most of the dead were Sherpas preparing for the upcoming climbing season. Filming had to be postponed.

When Rob Hall’s team is asked why they are climbing Everest; everybody answers “because it’s there”. In a 1924 interview, George Mallory, asked why he would risk his life to become the first to summit of Everest, famously answered “because it’s there.” Mallory disappeared during a summit attempt in June 1924. His body was found in May 1999, 245 meters from the summit.

Into Thin Air author Jon Krakauer came out against the film, particularly a scene in which his character refuses to help Anatoli Boukreev’s team with search and rescue. Krakauer told the Los Angeles Times, "I never had that conversation. Anatoli came to several tents, and not even Sherpas could go out … no one came to my tent and asked. Director Baltasar Kormákur defended the film in a response, stating the scene “was to illustrate how helpless people were and why they might not have been able to go out and rescue people.”

The film was released in 2015, the first year since 1974 that nobody successfully reached the summit.

The bodies of Andy ‘Harold’ Harris and Doug Hansen have never been recovered. Another expedition found the body of Rob Hall almost two weeks after his death; his widow Jan requested that it remain there, as his last wish was most likely to stay on the mountain. As depicted in the movie, Scott Fischer’s body was found by his friend Anatoli Boukreev. He moved it away from the climbing trail; it also remains on the mountain. Boukreev found the body of Yasuko Namba almost a year later. He built a primitive tomb from stones to protect it from scavengers. When her widower found out, he financed an expedition that recovered her body later that year.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/5ZQVpPiOji0To

Everest [2015]
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

[b]Title Card: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to summit Everest. Over the next 40 years, only top professional climbers attempted the same feat. One in four died. 1992: New Zealander Rob Hall pioneered the concept of commercial guiding on Everest for amateur climbers. Over the next four years his team, Adventure Consultants, successfully led 19 clients to summit without a single fatality. 1996: Other commercial operators follow Rob Hall’s lead, including Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness. More than 20 expeditions compete to summit Everest in the same two week window.

Rob: Can you just listen up? Guys? We got 2,000 feet, 600 vertical meters to Camp Four. It’s roped all the way, so I know you can make it. Now, once we get to the yellow band we’re gonna regroup, put on the masks, turn on the gas. Make sense?

Climber: 325 dollars a bottle. For oxygen? That’s daylight robbery!
Climber: Yeah, well, he’s cornered the market, he’s got it. He reckons there’s gonna be 20 teams at Base Camp this season.
Rob: Twenty teams?
Climber: I mean, with all the Sherpas and porters, it’s gonna be a tightz squeeze up there.

Jan: Just be back for the birth, Rob Hall.
Rob: You try and stop me.

Rob [to the climbers]: You, my friends, are following in some very famous footsteps. A history made famous by George Everest, George Mallory, Tenzing Norgay, Edmund Hillary. Legends all of them! For those of you who dare face their dreams, Adventure Consultants offers something beyond the power of words to describe. And why don’t we describe it in the brochure?
[a pause]
Rob: Because it’s mostly just pain.

Rob [to the climbers]: To put it simply guys, human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747. Okay, once we get above here, above the South Col, our bodies will be literally dying. And I mean literally dying. It’s not called the Death Zone for nothing. So the game is, can we get you up to the top and down to the bottom before that happens?

Beck: How close did you get?
Doug: Well, I got real close but it got late and I was pretty shot anyways.
Beck: Well, I think I would have made a run for it.
Doug: Every day I wake up thinking that.
Beck: Then why didn’t you do it?
Rob: 'Cause I turned him around. Morning 15 at the South Summit, bad conditions, we weren’t gonna make our 2:00 p.m. turnaround. See, it’s all good and well to make the top, Beck, but you pay me to bring you down safely. Remember that.

Caroline [a doctor to the climbers at base camp]: So Rob and Harold and Mike will tell you all sorts of stuff about mountaineering, but from a medical standpoint getting you to the top of Everest is really about oxygen. And the lack of it. To give you the best chance of summiting you need to prepare your bodies for the thin air up there. So, over the next month, before the final ascent you’re gonna make three partial acclimatizing ascents returning here to Base Camp after each one.
Rob [once they are out on the ice]: The bad news is that each ascent begins and ends with the Icefall. I’m sorry, but there is no way around it. There are millions of tons of glacial ice continually moving day and night. You got seracs the size of tower blocks, you got crevasses so deep they probably don’t even have a bottom.

Caroline [to the climbers]: Look out for hypothermia, things like slurred speech and irrational behavior. I’ve seen hypoxic climbers rip off all their clothes at 8,000 meters because they’re feeling hot. You all know about cerebral edema, the swelling of your brain to the point of loss of motor function and eventually death. And pulmonary edema, which is your lungs filling with fluid so you effectively drown. The only cure is to get down the mountain, fast.

Scott: There’s too much competition, Anatoli.
Anatoli: We don’t need competition between people. There is competition between every person and this mountain. The last word always belongs to the mountain.

Climber: What’s going on, man?
Rob: We’re still waiting for the South Africans. Taiwanese took forever as well.

Rob [to Scott]: Are these ladders going to take two?

Rob: You okay?
Beck: There’s no guarantee to the summit, I get it. But to get killed because I’m waiting in line like I’m in freaking Walmart. That’s not why I paid you 65,000 dollars. Now get me off of here.

Rob: Look, Base Camp’s, you know, chockablock full this year, so, I think it would all benefit us greatly by coming together like this and, you know, working out some kind of plan and schedule.
Ian: What, like some kind of rota?
Rob: Yes.
Ian: On Everest? Everyone knows Everest is a business for you, Robert, are you kidding? What gives you the right to tell us when we can climb and when we can’t?
Rob: I’m not telling you, mate. I’m asking. If we know when everybody’s planning to summit, for instance, you know, we can avoid the chaos that happened in the Icefall today. Adventure Consultants are aiming for May 10.
Ian: So are we, man!
Scott: Us too.
Another team leader: Yeah, May 10.
Scott: Okay, that’s bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hillary Step.
Rob: Yes, it is, that’s my point.
Ian: Look, this is ridiculous. We’re summiting when we want. All right? And I don’t need your permission to climb the mountain.
Rob: Ian, have you seen how many people are here at Base Camp?
Ian: We’re finished here.

Rob: I think we’re gonna have some trouble once we get above Camp Three. I mean, you wanna top it on the 10th, yeah?
Scott: Yeah.
Rob: So do I.
Scott: What, are you saying we should team up?
Rob: Well, it’s an idea, yeah.
Scott: Oh, man. I don’t know, man. We have different styles, man. All due respect, you’re a hand-holder. I mean, the best, but…I just believe that if you can’t get up there yourself you shouldn’t be on the mountain at all.

Scott: We’re planning on stashing, what, eight bottles of O up at the South Summit.
Anatoli: Well, I’m not using O.
Rob: What do you mean? You’re not using oxygen at all?
Scott: Come on, man. You know you want to.
Anatoli: English air. Don’t need it.
Rob: Yeah, but Anatoli, you’re guiding for Scott this year. You have people’s lives in your hands. It’s a job.
Anatoli: Never used it. Never will. Bigger problems if you run out.

Jon: All right. It’s all on the table, here. It hurts, it’s dangerous, it destroys relationships, it’s costing you all a small fortune… I gotta ask the question, you know I do. Why?
Beck: Why…
[a pause]
The climbers all in unison: Because…it’s there!

Jon: Come on. Guys, I’m serious. Yasuko. Why are you climbing Everest?
Yasuko [one of the very few women climbing]: Uh…I’m 47 years old, I have reached six of the seven summits, so…of course, now I have to reach the seventh.
Jon: That’s not an answer.

Rob: Ice!

Rob [on the radio]: Rob Hall to Scott Fischer, Rob Hall to Scott Fischer, Mountain Madness, how do you copy?
Scott: Hey, man! Scott, here. I’ve been down to Base Camp, and I’m back at Camp One. I’m gonna catch you tomorrow.
Rob: What, you’re not gonna rest up a day first? No? Scott, you sound a little rough. Mate, take an extra day.
Scott: No way, Jose, what, miss out on all the fun?
Rob: That’s a lot of up and down in one day, even for you, Scott.
Scott: You know what they say, man. It’s not the altitude, it’s the attitude.

Helen [on the radio]: Rob, I’ve just been over to Mal’s to get a weather update. It’s moving fast. It’s changed course slightly. And it could still go north, but, if it doesn’t it’s gonna hit sometime on the 11th, I reckon.
Rob: It’s a weather forecast, Helen. This mountain makes its own weather.

Doug: Why do we do this to ourselves?
Beck: Oh, this is crazy. You know, I never told Krakauer this when he was asking us why we climb Everest. When I’m at home I just got this big, black cloud following me. You know, like a depression? And when I’m out here on a mountain, any mountain…It’s just like it’s a cure. I feel like I’m reborn.
Doug: So, you’re happy now?
Beck: No, I’m starting to wonder. This is suffering, man. This is suffering.
Doug: Yeah. Suffer a few more days, for the rest of your life you’ll be a guy that got to the top of Everest.

Helen: I hope we’re not looking at another year with no clients at the top.
Caroline: Well, if they don’t get a move on pretty soon they’re out of time, aren’t they?
Helen: Yeah. And what’s Jon gonna say about that in his article?

Rob: Doug, Doug, Doug. It’s over, mate.
Doug: What?
Rob: I’m sorry.
Doug: No, no, no.
Rob: Doug, you’re too late, okay? Doug, Doug. Doug, listen to me. It’s way too late. It’s over.
Doug: No, come on!
Rob: Listen to me, mate, I’m sorry, but I gotta turn you around. Okay?
Doug: I can do it. It’s right here, man. It’s right here. I’m not coming back next year, man, it’s my last chance. You gotta let me do this. Let me do this. Please, Rob. Let’s do it. Let’s get it done.
Rob: All right. Come on.
Doug: Thanks, man.

Rob [on the radio]: Base Camp, do you copy, over?
Helen: Helen to Rob, go ahead.
Rob: Helen, please. I need a bottle of gas at the top of the Hillary Step. I can’t get Doug down without it. I’m really stuffed.
Helen: Understood that you need a bottle of oxygen at the bottom of the Hillary Step. We are sending it up to you, as soon as we can.
Rob: At the top, at the top.

Guy [on the radio]: Guy to Rob.
Rob: Go ahead, Guy, I got you, mate.
Guy: Rob, I suggest you get yourself down. You know you’re doing no good up there. Now, we’ve got people that we can send up to help Doug but you’ve gotta get yourself down, do you understand?
Rob: I mean, come on, man, we’re playing with a man’s life here. There’s no way I’m leaving Doug behind.

Helen [with thunder rumbling in the background]: Oh, no…oh, no.

Harold: Rob!
Rob: Harold?
Harold: I’ve got oxygen! Here, I found some half-empty ones. Where’s Doug?
Rob: Doug’s gone.
Harold: He’s what?
Rob: Gone!

Anatoli: Jon! I need help!
Jon: What?
Anatoli: They’re out there, I need help!
Jon: I can’t see, Toli. I’m snow-blind.

Jan [on the phone]: Helen, it’s Jan. Why haven’t I heard from you? Why isn’t anybody calling me?
Helen: They’ve been hit by a storm, Jan. It’s really bad.
Jan: Where is he?
Helen: We don’t know, exactly, but he was still on the summit at 4:00.
Jan: Oh, no. Can he get down?
Helen: Rob can, but Doug can’t. There’s at least 13 people stranded up there and, well, the storm is getting worse.

Guy: Can you patch Jan through?
Helen: To Rob?
Guy: Patch her through, yeah. Let’s just try it. Let’s just… Put the sat phone next to the radio. Yeah, if anyone can motivate him to move, then Jan will.

Helen [on the phone]: Jan, you’re on.
Jan: Okay. Hi, sweetheart, how are you doing?
Rob [on the radio]: Hi, my love. I’m a bit…A bit cold but I’m okay.
Helen: I know you are. But the sun’ll warm you soon. You’ve gotta get moving. You’ve gotta come on down.
Rob: My hands are frozen. My feet are frozen.
Jan: We’re sending people up to you with tea and O. But you’ve gotta get moving. Rob? Can you hear me? You’ve gotta get your circulation going.
Rob: Okay, my love.
Jan: You do it…You do it right now.
Rob: I love you. Over and out.

Mike: We can’t carry them. It’s not possible. It’s gonna… It’s gonna take all we got just to get ourselves down. I don’t wanna die, man.

Jan [on the phone]: You have to get him down before dark. He won’t survive another night.
Helen: We know. But the storm’s come back, real bad. We can’t get anyone up to him tonight. We tried.
Jan: He might as well be on the moon.

Rob [on the radio into the phone]: How’s Sarah?
Jan: Sarah?
Rob: Yeah.
Jan: Yeah, Sarah’s good.
Rob: Will you call her that for me?
Jan: Yes, I will.
Rob: I don’t think I’m gonna get to meet her. I’m so sorry.

Mike: Beck?

Peach [on the phone to the American Embassy]: No, you listen, sir, my husband’s already died once as you’ll have seen on the news. Trust me, having him die a second time is not gonna play well on CNN.[/b]

He survived. But he lost both hands and his nose.

Right now in America we are having an election. And all of the candidates [particularly the Democrats] will bitch and moan about how America has shafted “the people”. Usually by spouting the same tired rhetoric about the rich getting richer and the poor losing their jobs to corporations that set up business in one or another Third World [or Second World] hell hole.

And if only we elect Trump or Clinton or Sanders all of that will change. The government will finally be there for all equitably. Right. Then the fuckers who get elected take office and almost nothing changes. Then four years later it starts up all over again.

It would be interesting to sit down with Trump and Clinton [the probable candidates] and watch this film. And then measure the gap between their campaign trail reaction and their actual performance in the White House.

That enormous gap between the fairy tales that the candidates spin on the campaign trail and the reality of what they actually perpetuate and sustain once they get into office. That’s what is exposed here. Only it is never really encompassed systemically by exposing the manner in which crony capitalism functions to perpetuate and sustain it. There you have to read between the lines. But few are politically sophisticated enough to actually accomplish this.

The film opens with a dead man in a bathroom. He committed suicide. He committed suicide because the “charismatic and ruthless businessman” Rick Carver just took away his family’s home. You know, for the bank.

The cops and courts of course are just along for the ride. They’re just “doing their jobs” in upholding the law. The laws that are bought and paid for in Washington and in state capitals throughout the nation by the folks from Wall Street. In other words, the folks from the banks that most profit from all this never have to deal with the pain and the suffering that they cause. They have other working stiffs to do that for them.

But: Don’t forget to vote!

And at the other end, Dennis has marketable skills in construction. But the economy isn’t able to provide any jobs. It’s smack dab in the middle of the Great Recession. So he decides that if you can’t beat them, join them.

And there’s Donald Trump crisscrossing the nation with hoards of white working class dolts rallying behind him because they hate the browns and the blacks for taking their America away from them.

Or as Mr. Lennon once intimated: Keep them doped with religion and sex and TV/And they think they’re so clever and classless and free/But they’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see

Again, this is one of those films where you ask yourself 1] What would I do? and 2] What’s the right thing to do?

After all, this is basically about a man who embodies the point that I make regarding the narcissistic personality. For him, right and wrong revolves entirely around “what’s in it for me?” And the moral objectivists can yammer on and on and on about how such behavior is simply wrong, and he could not possibly care less.

IMDb

[b]The film is based on a real life father who exposed a corrupted real estate agent.

In the beginning of the film Dennis and Frank’s little boys comment on how Australia looks like the USA upside down. A large theme of the film is reverse. The reversal of Dennis’s role from evicted to evictee, and also on how the American moral system is completely upside down. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Homes
trailer: youtu.be/GHprbOv1W9I

99 HOMES [2014]
Written in part and directed by Ramin Bahrani

[b]Rick [on the phone]: Well, I’ll tell you what you do. Remove the meter, turn the water off, and let them sweat for a couple of days. Then you ride in on your white fucking horse, tell them you have a cash buyer and Richard Carver can approve a short sale. You want me to spell it for you? R-I-C… OK, well, I can’t hold your hand while you give them a hand job, Bill. Just get me the property.

Police officer: You’re the bank’s realtor on this eviction. I need an official statement. What happened and why?
Rick: Well, Dudura, it’s a real shame because we arrived here with two pizzas for Mr Kadwell, the property owner, but he didn’t want anchovies, so he went into the house, pulled out a gun and he blew his brains out. And that set off Mrs Kadwell who was expecting Chinese for dinner. You’re talking about a man who just killed himself. I am the last man who knocked on Patrick Kadwell’s door, in his life. That is his wife of 15 years, Samantha, his daughters, Dylan, six, Paige, 11. What official statement can encapsulate the tragic absurdity of this fucked-up situation? I can’t bring him back to life. Stop wasting my time.

Cop: Have we got anything else, boss?
Rick: Next eviction’s Tuesday. Natalia will call you.
Cop: Roger that.

Bank attorney: Your Honour, he missed three payments and is underwater over 80 grand. The bank can have a buyer in place within 30 days.
Judge: Did you in fact miss three payments?
Dennis: Yes, sir, but I was told to. Two departments at the same bank were telling me opposing things and then, just recently, I got a final notice for eviction.
Bank attorney: We’d like to get this property off the market.
Judge: I see no reason to hold up the sale.
Dennis: But they told me not to pay. And that’s why I’m behind. They told me not to pay.
Judge: While I sympathize with your situation I have 40,000 cases like this backed up behind yours. Final judgment granted. I’m ordering you to vacate the premises.
Dennis: That’s my family home, Your Honour. I was born and raised in that home. He was born and raised there too. He’s my son, Connor. Please don’t do this. We’ve lived there our whole lives. My mum runs her business out of that home. That’s our second source of income right now.
Judge: Is this your son?
Dennis: That’s my son.
Judge: He should be in school and not here.
Dennis: He’s gonna lose his school, with all due respect. If we lose our home.[/b]

The judge just moves on to the next case…

[b]Sheriff: I’m Deputy Anderson with the Sheriff’s department. We’re here to serve you a court-ordered eviction.
Dennis: OK, well…
Sheriff: So, do you have any weapons on your body or anywhere in the house?
Lynn [Dennis’s mother]: No, no, no, no. Not us.
Rick: Good morning. My name’s Rick Carver. I’m a licensed real estate broker. And, er, I’m very sorry to tell you that this home has been foreclosed on and officially transferred to the bank. I need you to vacate the premises.

Rick: What I’ve received is a court order signed by a judge. It says you are to vacate these premises today.
Dennis: We were scared of this.
Rick: This home is owned by the bank. My office offered you a $3,500 cash-or-keys settlement from the bank which would have given you time to vacate the premises and you refused.
Dennis: Yes, sir.
Lynn: We didn’t refuse. We tried to save our home.
Dennis: We were trying to save it.
Rick: This is a very painful time, I know. It’s a difficult thing to carry through on, but the time has come. You have to leave your property. You are trespassing right now. You are breaking the law.
Lynn: Sir, this is our home so we just need a few minutes.
Rick: We’re going in circles here so I’ll let the sheriffs take care of it.

Sheriff [to Dennis]: Listen to me. There are two ways that we can do this. Right? An easy way which is you do what you’re told when asked. The other way is that I take you and your mum to jail.

Dennis: Hey, what about the rest of our stuff?
Rick: They’re gonna bring everything out. There’s no need to worry…Now, my advice would be to get a moving truck because your neighbors are gonna have access to everything you own by the end of the day

Connor [getting off the school bus]: What are they doing?
Dennis: Nothing.
Connor: This is our house. This is our house.
Dennis; It’s OK.
Sheriff: Son, where are you heading?
Connor: Get off me! his is our house.
Rick: It’s a very difficult situation. Please take your son off the property.
Dennis: What do you think I’m doing?
Connor: Those are my toys.
Lynn: It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK, sweetie.

Connor: I just wanna go to my room. Please.
Dennis: You can’t go to your room right now.
Connor: You said we weren’t gonna lose our house. You lied to me.
Lynn: Sweetie, he didn’t lie. He didn’t know.

Lynn: Dennis, this motel is half full of people like us.
Dennis: They’re not people like us.
Lynn: They’re all evicted and they get stuck here. I could maybe take the bus and start looking for apartments.
Dennis: We can’t afford it.
Lynn: It’s just first and last month’s.
Dennis: Plus two or three months’ security. Four maybe, cos of our credit. Our credit’s shot.
Lynn: Dennis, we’ve got to get out of here.

Scrawled on the wall [in shit] of a home that a bank foreclosed on: KILL BANKERS

Dennis [to the work crew]: Alright, let’s do it. Let’s get this shit done.

Rick [answering the phone]: This is Richard Carver.
Man [enraged]: Adjustable rate mortgage, cocksucker! I’m homeless, you motherfucker!
Rick: Stop calling me, you freak.
Man: I’m gonna call you every goddamn day to remind you what a piece of shit you are!!

Rick [driving down a street]: What do you see out there?
Dennis: I see homes.
Rick: I just saw nine opportunities to make money in the last five blocks. Three properties without mailboxes and one with an overgrown lawn and no car in the drive, two with white signs in the windows and three with shiny new doorknobs. If you can get attuned to seeing those kinds of opportunities, you can get up off your hands and knees and really start working for me.
Dennis: I can work. You’ve seen me all week.
Rick: Yeah, I know you worked for good crews with Rick Kirby, Chris Camilleri, right? But the unfortunate thing is, they’re out of business. Because they build homes. I own homes. You know what I am? I’m a man who owns a hell of a lot of properties. You can be a part of that, but it’s a hell of a responsibility. What I need to know is that I have someone who can handle any situation I want to walk away from, 24/7. I don’t care if your kid’s in the school play, it’s Christmas, you lined up the best damn blowjob in Orlando, when you work for me, you’re mine.

Rick [to Dennis holding up a gun]: You know how to shoot, right? I’ll run a background check so you can carry a concealed weapon. Go on take it.
Dennis: Are you fucking with me?
Rick: Surly homeowners. You’re gonna need it.

Rick [to Dennis after fucking over another family about to lose their home]: Don’t be soft. They all got a sob story. But the law’s the law. That’s the side you’re on. You should be smart enough to know the outcome of this situation. So toughen up. I’m evicting a hedge-fund manager out of here in two weeks. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and maybe you’ll learn something this time.

Rick: I’m selling this home for Fannie Mae. I can’t do that if it doesn’t have a kitchen, can I?
Dennis: No.
Rick: So, who just paid me $33,000 for new cabinets, appliances and a counter top plus labor?
Dennis: Fannie Mae.
Rick: Fannie Mae. Congratulations. You just fucked the government.

Rick [handing Dennis ab envelope]: Mr. Nash?
Dennis: Yeah.
Rick: If you’re interested, let me know. If not, you can use this to take your kid to Disney World and get yourself a job Migueling Cinderella’s castle.
[Rick opens the envelope – it’s a check for $3,200][/b]

To make a deal with the devil or not…

[b]Dennis: I don’t give a shit about the government. They ain’t never done nothing for me, so…that’s a lot of money you just gave me. Feels a bit like trouble.
Rick: You done honest work your whole life building homes. What did that get you but me knocking at your door?
Dennis: Are we stealing? Is this stealing?
Rick: Well, in 2006 you borrowed $85,000 against your home and never paid it back, Nash. Are you telling me that’s not stealing?
Dennis: What? Are you serious? That’s not stealing, that’s me taking a loan. That’s me working my arse off to pay back that loan. I wanted to pay it back. I didn’t steal.
Rick: That’s not how the banks see it or the taxpayers paying for the bail-out.
Dennis: You think I bought a Porsche? No. I invested every cent I borrowed into construction equipment so that I could pay back that loan and put a roof over my family’s head, put food in my kid’s mouth. The economy crashed. I can’t predict that. I can’t predict the weather.
Rick: I can. I’m a Doppler fucking radar. You took something you didn’t give back. The bank screwed you over. Take your pick. Either way you lost. But I made more money during the crash than before it. You can too, you just gotta stop lying to yourself and ask, “what did you do wrong that your family lives in a motel?”

Friend: So who’s this Rick Carver dude?
Dennis: That’s my boss. For the time being.
Friend: What’s that like?
Dennis: Oh, it’s great. He’s…he’s a fucking asshole.
[they remove a central air conditioning unit]
Friend: What are you doing?
Dennis: Got to take a picture. To prove to the bank this shit’s missing so they pay us to put it back in.
Friend: We’re stealing it to then bring it back?
Dennis: You wanna get paid?
Friend: Hell, yeah.
Dennis: Then I got to take a picture.[/b]

Then a sequence of scenes where Dennis [working for Rick] has to inform distraught homeowners that they will be losing their home. Their pain now becomes his gain. Just like Rick.

[b]Dennis [after a homeowner pulled a gun on him]: Hey, Rick.
Rick: What?
Dennis: You still got that Ruger?
Rick: Excuse me? What did you say? Are you saying you want the gun?
[Rick hands him the gun]
Rick: I ran the background check already. You’re clear to carry it.

Rick [driving a golf cart]: What do you got for me?
Dennis: Successfully negotiated six cash-for-keys with six tenants.
Rick: Good. So, Nash, how much did you tell your buddies per home? 3500 or less?
Dennis: Yeah, 3500.
Rick: Oh, you told them the full amount?
Dennis: I told 'em what I told 'em. What do you care?
Rick [chuckling]: Yeah.

Rick: Drink?
Dennis: No, I’m good, I’m good. High on life.
Rick: Well, you might wanna reconsider. We got one more stop. 224 Lake View Court.
Dennis: Is that Mr Tanner? I offered him a cash-for-keys from the bank.
Rick: Guess what? He never called. And his eviction’s today. You can pop your cherry with this one. First one’s a bitch, but you get numb to it. All you gotta do is stand next to me today, but after this you’re gonna do 'em on your own.
Dennis: Listen, Rick, I don’t…Could I…Could I just…
Rick: Go fuck yourself? Yeah. What did you think it was gonna mean, working for me?
Dennis: I just thought that maybe…
Rick: No, you didn’t. You didn’t think. You didn’t have the guts to ask me either. Nobody does. Because who in their right mind wouldn’t rather put someone in a home than drag 'em out of it? Up until three years ago I was a regular old real-estate agent. Putting people in homes, speculating on property, that was my job. Now, in 2006 Robert and Julia Tanner borrowed $30,000 to put an enclosed patio on their home that they had somehow managed to live without for 25 years. Why don’t you ask them about that when they’re spitting in your face while you walk 'em to the curb? Why don’t you ask the bank what they were thinking giving them an adjustable-rate mortgage? Then you can go to the government and ask why they lifted every regulation and sat there like a retarded stepchild. You, Tanner, the banks, Washington, every other homeowner and investor from here to China turned my life into evictions. I’m not an aristocrat. I wasn’t born into this. My daddy was a roofer, OK? I grew up on construction sites watching him bust his ass until he fell off of a townhouse one day. A lifetime of insurance payments and they dropped him before he could buy a wheelchair, but only after they got him hooked on painkillers. Do you think I’m gonna let that happen to me? Do you think America 2010 gives a flying rat’s ass about Carver? Or Nash? Uh-uh. America doesn’t bail out the losers. America was built by bailing out winners, by rigging a nation of the winners for the winners by the winners. You go to church, Nash? You go to church?
Dennis: Sure.
Rick: Only one in 100 is gonna get on that ark, son. And every other poor soul’s gonna drown. I’m not gonna drown.

Dennis [about evicting Tanner]: I wanna do it alone. I’ve seen you do it. I know how it’s done. I’ll do it alone.
Rick: Help yourself.[/b]

And so he does. It’s brutal. Really brutal.

[b]Dennis: Mr Tanner, I’m gonna have to ask you to move to the curb.
Mr. Tanner [in a daze]: What?
Dennis: I know, I know. I’m sorry. Real sorry. If I can help you with anything…I’m sorry. I didn’t wanna do this today. I tried to avoid this.
Mrs Tanner [holding her baby]: How do you live with yourself? You make me sick.

Dennis: Hey, Frank.
Frank [indicating the bank men pulling away]: What do you want? Are you with those guys? Dennis: No, no, not at all. Er, I’ve just come to see how you’re doing. And, um, if you want, I think I can get you a job.
Frank: That’s a nice shirt. You still working with your friend?
Dennis: I didn’t have to come over here. I just wanted to, um…
Frank: To what? To lie to me, to cheat me?
Dennis: No, to help you if you wanted it. Have you figured out where your kids are gonna stay when you lose your home?
Frank: My kids have a home. This is their home. I did research, gave boxes of files to a lawyer pro bono. We’re gonna win, legally, in court.
Dennis: It’s not gonna make any difference. I’ve been there, Frank. I’ve been there. You gotta be realistic.
Frank: I’m being realistic. I didn’t ask for your help, sir, and I don’t want it. Please leave. Please get off my property. You’re trespassing.

Man: Hey! Hey, where are you going? Hey, you! Over here. I’m talking to you.
Dennis: You’re talking to me?
Man: What are you doing here? Are you following me?
Dennis: No, I live here. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Man: Yeah, I know who you are. No, you’re Rick Carver Realty. I know exactly who you are. You kicked me out of my home.
Dennis: What? I don’t know you, bud. Come over here and we’ll talk.
Man: Why would I walk over here? Nash. That’s your name, isn’t it? You don’t want everybody else to hear about it, what a fucking asshole you are and how you kicked me and my entire family out of our home?
Dennis: You got me mixed up with someone.
Man: No, I don’t. I know exactly who you are. Oh, you know it was you. And here everybody else is gonna know.
Dennis: Just calm down.
Man: You kicked me out of my home. You ruined my fucking life. No, you don’t get to go anywhere.

Lynn: Are you evicting people?
Dennis: Mom!
Lynn [shouting angrily]: He said you were at his eviction!!

Dennis: Did anyone ever come up to you after an eviction?
Rick: Yeah, someone tried to run me off the road last year. I haven’t gone out to dinner once with my wife and girls in the last three years without looking over my shoulder. That’s why I carry the gun. Even now at 5am.
Dennis: Is it worth it?
Rick: As opposed to what? Did somebody get to you? Don’t bullshit me. Someone’s calling you. Or they tried to find you. What do you think?
Dennis: Huh. Think about what?
Rick: Well, you wanted to kill me once. Now you’re gonna make a lot of money.
Dennis: I did want to kill you.

Rick: Like I said, don’t get emotional about real estate, Nash. They’re boxes. You listening? Big boxes, small boxes. What matters is how many you got. You’re gonna have more properties than women to fill them with. You know that, right? You love your mum, you love your kid. Buy 'em a house. Buy one for your mum. Buy one for your kid.
Buy one for yourself.

Dennis: I bought this for you. And you. That’s your pool. This is your house.
Lynn Let’s go home. This isn’t funny.
Dennis: I’m not joking, Mom.
Lynn: That’s not his basketball net. This is somebody else’s and I want our house. I wanna go home.
Dennis: We don’t have that home anymore. I sold it. I sold our old home and I bought this. Fresh start. I don’t wanna go back to that house we were evicted from.
Lynn: You sold our house?
Dennis: We couldn’t move into our old home for two to three weeks so I had to get us out of that motel so that Connor wouldn’t get killed.
Lynn: By kicking people out? By kicking people out of their houses? You buy this?

Dennis: This is forged?
Rick: It’s a stupid piece of paper someone forgot to file when the loan was being bought and sold a million times over. It’s just a technicality.
Dennis: It’s Frank Greene.
Rick: Yeah. Same deadbeat stealing my water and power. I told you he was no good. Hey, that’s not your dick in your hand, son. That is the Santa Fe deal. 100 homes, 1,000 more for Freeman. Our money, Miami. Your home, everything. Got me?
Dennis: Mm-hm, yeah, I do.
Rick: Don’t “mm-hm, yeah, I do” me. Courthouse plaza, 9:45am.

Rick [to Dennis]: Morning, Donald Trump. I’m outside your new mansion. Frank Greene’s eviction. Let’s go. There’s eight other homeowners we got to evict after Greene. I’ll start out nice with an aggressive cash-for-keys. I’ll pay out of my own pocket if I have to. I don’t give a shit. But if they give me any flak, Freeman’s boys and the court clerk, baby. No big deal.

Sheriff: Sir, why don’t you send your wife and kids out? Send your wife and kids out. Sir, drop your weapon.
Frank [from inside the house with a rifle]: The court decided my case in 60 seconds flat. Nobody checked the file index. Fact. No proof of publication filed. Fact. Nobody looked at the cancelled checks to prove bank payment. Fact. The judge, he wasn’t up for re election. He wasn’t beholden to anybody in this county. 60 seconds for a lifetime and this is my home.

Frnak: Look up there. Look up there! You see that? That is the sun and it is shining. Nobody is gonna tell me it is night when it is day. And God Almighty could come down here and tell me it’s night and I would know that it’s day, because I know what I know. And nobody is gonna tell me the sun isn’t shining. Nobody.
Dennis: I cheated you. I put a forged document in your file on the day of your court hearing, Frank. This is your home.[/b]

The look on Rick’s face? Priceless.

I think that many of us learn the hard way that while in theory “opposites attract”, it is far more likely that you can sustain a relationship over the years when there is something in your life that you both love passionately.

The bond that Elise and Didier share is music. Bluegrass music.

On the other hand, “he talks, she listens…he’s a romantic atheist, she’s a religious realist.”

Then there is that ever mysterious factor we call “chemistry”. Didier meets Elise and it is “love at first sight”. Or, rather, lust that, over time, becomes love. Here though nobody is ever really able to pin this down…to explain it in a manner that say, philosophers, can all agree does in fact explain it. There are simply too many variables to take into account. And too much changes over time. And not just between Didier and Elise, but between them and all of the other people in their lives.

Reminds you a bit of Johnny and June.

Still, in any relationship, no matter how strong and sustaining the bond, it will always be tested in tragedy. And that is brought to the surface at the very beginning of the film: Their young daughter Maybelle is dying of cancer. And step by step we get to watch her succumb to the cancer and die. From her bleeding gums to her tiny coffin.

Thy will be done.

And I would imagine that nothing makes a human being feel more helpless than [as a parent] having to endure this – to endure it and not be able to do a damn thing about it.

So naturally you need to vent the pain, the anger on others. The spouse for example.

It is times like this that you most wish that somehow you could believe in God. At least you would have something at the end of the rope into/onto which you could fling your rage and your grief. But instead all there is is the numbing reality of enduring it. Having to endure that which at times is unendurable.

IMDb

[b]In an interview with Beverly Cohn, writer and actor Johan Heldenbergh stated that the original point of the departure for writing the play, which was adapted into the movie, was a political statement about religion and politics, and Maybelle’s story was directly linked to George W. Bush vetoing stem cell research.

Sandmountain’ is the name of the song Didier and the band play for Elise as she dies at the end of the film. Sand Mountain is a sandstone plateau in the state of Alabama. That could be Didier’s way of acknowledging Elise’s changing her name to Alabama, which was a source of tension between the two earlier in the film.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broke … _Breakdown
trailer: youtu.be/eeJg4VA_kkw

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN [2012]
Directed by Felix van Groeningen

[b]Elise: Can we agree on one thing? We do our crying at home? When we’re here we’re positive, okay?
Didier: Okay.

Didier: We’re going to shoot it dead tomorrow. What are we going to do?
Maybelle [his daughter]: Shoot the cancer dead.
Didier: Yes!
Maybelle: Yes![/b]

Then we go back in time, 7 years previously.

Didier: J.D. Crowe and The New South. Then the Tony Rice Unit. Manzanita is definitely my favorite CD ever. He used to have fantastic voice. But he lost it. It’s such a shame. I don’t know how. Following an illness or something. Or a bit too much whiskey!

youtu.be/Py9ZPX-8CUE
youtu.be/no5dp4dnN_g

[b]Elise: Why do you play the banjo?
Didier: I’m too stupid to play the guitar and too dumb to play the mandolin. I once used to be a punk rocker, and a banjo sort of snarls, which reminds me of punk rock.

Didier [to Elise]: Why do you have so many tattoos?[/b]

There’s a story behind some of them that we learn about later.

[b]Elise: I’m pregnant. Three months.
[Didier’s reaction is not exactly joyful]
Elise: What?
Didier [grappling for words]: Maybe I don’t want that. How did that happen? How come…?
Elise: I’ve…I’ve never been regular. What do you think? That I knew? That I’ve tricked you into this?
Didier [in an outburst that startled us]: Maybe I don’t want to make decisions about someone else’s life!!
Elise: I didn’t know.
[Didier turns angrily and stomps away…but then he comes back: big time]

Doctor: You can go home tomorrow.
Maybelle: Yes!
Doctor: Great, eh? But then you have to come back in a few weeks. Like I told you.
Maybelle: Yes.
Doctor: The we can see if Captain Chemo won the fight.

Friend: Well, do you know what it is yet?
Elise: A baby I reckon. But I can’t be sure. With Didier being such a stallion, it could be a foal.

Maybelle [to her father]: Where do birds go after they die?

Doctor: Her bone marrow is producing abnormal white blood cells again. Which isn’t good news, of course. But, as we already discussed, we’re not giving up yet. We will simply mve on to the next stage in the treatment, a stem cell transplant. First, we will destroy her own blood marrow with more chemo and radiotheraphy, then we will replace it with new stem cells from a donor. A donor who is as close to Maybell as possible. Unfortunately, parents cannot be considered as donors.

Didier: You should try explaining to a child why the dead bird isn’t moving anymore. It’s difficult.
Elise: I know.
Didier: You want to say that people have come up with all sorts of ways of dealing with it. That some people believe the bird has a soul that doesn’t die and goes to Heaven. That it’ll see its mommy and daddy again there and will fly around forever in a place where the sun always shines and there aren’t any windows. That other people believe the bird is a martyr in the fight against the windows. And after his death he will be given lots of female birds that have never mated and he can do what he wants with them. But Daddy doesn’t believe in any of that. Daddy thinks that everything just dies and stays dead. But you can’t say that.
Elise: No, you can’t say that, Didier.

Doctor [to Elise and Didier]: Her natural resistance will be destroyed completely first and she will be very weak. Which is why we are putting her in a pressurized room. The new blood cells may attack her body. That doesn’t happen with identical stem cells but you could only find those in the case of identical twins or cloned embryos. Unfortunately science hasn’t gotten that far yet.

Doctor [to Maybelle]: And that, that’s blood. The stem cells are in there. Stem cells are little soldiers who will march down that tube into your blood. And those little soldiers mean business. Understand, eh?
[Maybelle nods]
Doctor: They are going to cure you.[/b]

Unless of course they don’t.

Didier: You need to do something, sweetheat. Things can’t go on like this. Things…things need to change.
Elise: You’d like things to be like they used to be, eh?
Didier: Yes, of course.
Elise: Before we had Maybelle. You never wanted the child, did you?
Didier: Elise…that’s not fair.
Eloise: I shouldv’e listened to you. You didn’t want kids.
Didier: I did. You being pregnant just took me by surprise, sweetheart. I’d never given kids a thought. But once she was there I was the happiest man in the world.
Elise: So happy that you started drinking.
Didier: You just want to pick a fight.
Elise: You were drunk when she was born. And once she was there you had to head to a bar with your pals to celebrate. You were gone for ten days.
Didier: You’re exaggerating.
Elise: You only came home when you developed jaundice from drinking.

And then it all comes pouring out: I did this, you did that. Who is most to blame?

Didier: You can talk. For the first 3 months that you were pregnant…
Elise: Go on, say it. Say it. It’s true. It’s true. I smoked and drank during the first three months…but I didn’t know I was pregnant.
Didier: It’s not your fault, sweetheart.
Elise: A baby is formed during the first three months. The brain is already fully formed after 6 weeks.
Didier: Elise, stop it. Stop it, Elise.
Elise: I didn’t know!
Didier: Stop! People die for the stupidiest of reasons. Maybe this palce was too dirty for her. Maybe she ate something she shouldn’t have eaten. Or we should have changed her sheets more.
Elise: What are you saying? Who changed her sheets?

And on and on and on:

Elise: And I can have a go at you.
Didier: What?
Elise: There isn’t any cancer in my family, but there is in yours. Two uncles and your dad.
Didier [staring at her in disbelief]: Fuck you, Elise! Yeah, fuck you.
Elise: Fuck you. You were never for it, never!
Didier [exploding]: What did you say? Fuck you! You bitch! You fucking bitch!

Nope, that doesn’t bring Maybelle back. Then all the way back to the day they met.

[b]Elise [in her tattoo shop]: Come in.
Didier: It’s not my thing. Honestly. What could possibly be worth putting on your body that can never be removed? Don’t you regret your tattoos?
Elise: Of course I do. But it’s not a problem. If you no longer like one, you put another one on top.

Didier [to Elise]: Bluegrass, that is country music in its purest form. A violin, an upright bass, a mandolin, a guitar and a banjo. Just strings, purely acoustic. And voices. It’s aboslutely divine.

George W. Bush [on the television]: America was founded on the principle that we were all created equal and endowed by our Creator with the right to life. We can advance the cause of science while upholding this Founder’s promise.
Commentator: Some disagree with the president saying that embryonic stem cell research holds the promise to save lives.
Commentator: There are millions of people dying each years that might by cured by stem cell research. We are losing valuable time.
Didier [reacting to all of this]: For months we were surrounded by stem cells and we had the feeling that medical science wasn’t going far enough. That the brakes had been applied. It’s a feeling you can’t explain and your child dies. And then you hear bastards like that have been slowing everything down for years. For religious reasons.
Elise: Didier. It’s America. It is allowed here, it’s just that they haven’t gotten that far yet.
Didier [angrier]: Because those bastards have been slowing everything down for years! But what gives them the right to do that?!
Bush [on the television]: It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it.
Didier: They call themselves pro-life. Technology for killing people knows no bounds, but technology for curing people is a different story. Because embryos are grown outside of marriage! Embryos the size of a pinhead. The hyprocritical bastard! Pro-life? My ass, asshole!! Bunch of extremist fundamentalists! Stick your cross up your ass! Next to your brain! Goddamnit!!!
Elise: Didier…don’t.
Didier: Bloody hell, Elise. The whole world is obsessed with religion. The whole world has gone crazy. And so have you!

Didier [to the audience from the stage at a concert]: Do you know who I feel sorry for? The scientists who, since Darwin, have spent their time studying biology. Who have tried to explain this wonderful world, to describe it and study it. Who have spent their whole life doing it in the most difficult conditions. And who now hear that there are still spastics who question the theory of evolution. Because of Yahweh! Yahweh created everything and he did it in just six days. And not in 4.5 billion years. It’s enough to make you puke. Bunch of imbeciles!!
[disbelief and gasps from the audience]
Didier: But let me tell you something, Yahweh, the God from the Old Testamnetr, the God that 80% of the world kneels before, is by far the most evil person in literature. Read your Bible. Read it carefully. Yahweh is a manipulator, a sadist, a killer, a racist, a misogynist, a homophope, who is narrow-minded and vain, who carries out ethnic cleansing, who demands child sacrifice and plays sadistic games to test people’s faith. A dictator who apparently created heaven and earth and mankind on purpose so we’d fall humbly on our knees before Him and deferentially sing His praise. Well I wasn’t created in that image. I’m not taking orders from a God like that. I’m better than that.
[pause]
Didier: I’m…I’m a monkey and I’m scared.

Didier [to the audience more subued]: My daughter Maybelle…my little daughter died because certain experiments are regarded as unethical by the religious community.
[back to shouting]
Didier: But that’s a mere detail. Millions die every year because the scumbag they call the Pope says you can’t use a condom when having sex. But it’s only a mere detail, historically speaking, but not to me. Not to me!

Elise [now Alabama]: If I want to believe that Maybelle is a star up in the sky, I will. If I want to believe she’s a bird that perches on our window sill, or a butterfly that sits on my shoulder or a bloody frog that…
Didier: Maybelle is dead, sweetheart. She’s dead! She’s gone, she’s not here anymore!! But we are still here. I’m still here. We have to carry on together.[/b]

Too late. She has already covered up his name. The tattoo.

[b]Elise/Alabama: I always knew. That it was too good to be true. That it couldn’t last. That life isn’t like that, life isn’t generous. You mustn’t love someone. You mustn’t become attached to someone. Life begrudges you that. It takes everything away from you and it laughs in your face. It betrays you.

Didier: Sweetheart, don’t…
Elise/Alabama [shouting]: Don’t call me that!! I’m not your sweetheart anymore!!! I’TS OVER!!![/b]

Ennui. It’s not at all uncommon in this day and age. Particularly among the young. Particularly when they are on the cusp between childhood and adulthood. But there are still those who seem especially prone to go out in search of a meaning able to propel them into a future that matters.

On the other hand, does this really explain what we see on the screen with Nicole?

And living in a small town where the options are often circumscribed all the more can heighten that sense of “existential angst”. If that’s how to describe it.

In other words, what’s the point?

Unless of course something changes. Unless of course nothing does.

But, in the interim, you can see it plastered all over her face time and again: that look that goes way, way, way beyond boredom. And then there’s the scene where she plops down forlornly onto this huge air mattress, lets the air out of it and sinks down into it. Almost disappearing altogether.

One thing though: This particular rendition unfolds in the vicinity of the upper middle class. There’s no question of enduring it from paycheck to paycheck to paycheck.

It’s beautifully shot in black and white. Two of my favorite colors. Together they always connote one or another shade of gray.

It is just absolutely gorgeous to look at.

And then there’s Martin. You wonder: Can something like this actually happen?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_dors_Nicole
trailer: youtu.be/w–5auC1yr8

TU DORS NICOLE [You’re Sleeping Nicole] 2014
Written in part and directed by Stéphane Lafleur

Boy: Hey.
Nicole: I can’t sleep.
Boy: Will I see you again?
Nicole: What for?
Boy: To have fun.
Nicole [shrugging]: This was fun?
Boy: You’re hard to follow.
Nicole: Bye.

So much about her is captured in this scene.

[b]Nicole [to JF]: Will that song be over soon?

Nicole [to Véronique after a game of miniature golf]: This used to be more fun.

Véronique [with Nicole walking their bikes out in the middle of nowhere]: Where are we going?
Nicole: No idea, I’m following you.
Véronique: And I’ve been following you.

Nicole: You can say you like her.
JF: What? No.
Nicole: You don’t think she’s pretty?
JF: Yeah. No, I…
Nicole: You’re giving me the “yeah, no”?
JF: You like cornering people.
Nicole: Depends.

Nicole: I know that look. What’s wrong?
Véronique: You’re going to hate me.
Nicole: No, I won’t. Ever.
[She tells her]
Nicole: Fuck you, Véronique Simard!

JF: What’s going on?
Nicole: Nothing.
JF: You’re my buddy’s little sis.

Nicole [to her mentally challenged co-workers whom she suspects got her fired]: Happy now? You got what you wanted. I’m fired. Is that what your retard brain was hoping?
[they stare at her…then start laughing]
Co-worker [after she’s gone]: Retard brain!

Nicole [of JF]: Where is he.
Brother: Gone.
Nicole: Gone where?
Brother: I dunno. He’s just gone. Not my fault that he cannot drum properly.

Nicole: So Maude Cloutier finally snagged you?
Tommy: In fact I asked her. Some people search all their lives for a goal. I realized mine is to look after Maude. To take care of her. That’s my goal. It’s that simple.[/b]

Trust me: The manner in which the “the war on drugs” is portrayed in the media [or along the campaign trail] bears little resemblance to what actually unfolds on the ground. Especially in regard to the drug cartels in Mexico. Here there are “players” in a ghastly drama that are understood far better by the folks pulling the strings behind the curtain.

And the violence that goes along with it is no exception.

In other words, no place for an idealist.

It’s easy enough to create this narrative inside your head where the good guys are always dressed in white and the bad guys always dressed in black. Then we always know who to root for beyond all doubt.

In the end though the “war on drugs” is one gigantic whack-a-mole operation. As long as the culture itself creates an enormous demand for “alternative realities”, there will always be those ready, willing and able to supply it for them. And that’s before we get to prison industrial complex that thrives on drug convictions.

So, how much of this might possibly be “based on a true story”. Will the “average citizen” ever really know?

And then there are the tunnels. How high does Trump’s wall have to be to effectively block them?

And aside from Kate, it’s nothing but men, men and more men. Men intent on being men. Which of course explains a lot. Apart from the role she unwittingly plays covering for the CIA, Kate seems to exist only to contrast the “female sensitivity” to this bloody mayhem versus the Macho Man willingness to not only engage it, but to revel in it. These “warriors” are not reluctant to use violence, they’re reluctant not to. Not that the drug cartels are not equally invested in it.

So, is she man enough to get with the program?

As for the end, I would have jumped to the closing credits with Kate still pointing the gun at Alejandro.

Look for Keyser Söze.

IMDb

[b]While Benicio Del Toro’s character is frequently silent in the movie, he initially had more lines. “In the original script, the character explained his background several times to Kate,” Del Toro says. “And that gave me information about who this guy was, but it felt a little stiff to have someone you just met 15 minutes ago suddenly telling you what happened to him and who he is.” Working with director Denis Villeneuve, Del Toro began cutting some of his dialogue to preserve the mystery of who his character is; Villeneuve estimates they cut 90 percent of what Del Toro was originally intended to say by screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. Like Del Toro, Villeneuve saw power in stripping the character down to a brooding silence, stating that dialogue belongs to plays and “movies are about movement, character, and presence, and Benicio had all that.”

The word “Sicario” derives from the Latin word “Sicarius”, meaning “dagger man”. The term was used by Romans to describe Jewish Zealots who killed Roman citizens using a “sica” or small dagger hidden in their cloaks.

The banner in the Juarez is hard to read, but you can clearly see “Los Estamos Observando” that translates to “We are watching you”.

Denis Villeneuve describes the film as a dark poem. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/7XLQ1bkSLDo

SICARIO [2015]
Directed by Denis Villeneuve

[b]Dave [to Kate]: PD found something.

News reporter on TV: Such a heavy body count this close to Phoenix, is without a doubt a major escalation for the cartels. There will be pressure in Washington to explain how such a dramatic outrage could happen so deep inside the American heartland. We may be talking about the victims of a turf war, or maybe some illegal immigrants who are tied to a ransom, but it will be some weeks before we have a clearer picture on who the victims are.

Kate: What’s our objective?
Matt: To dramatically overreact.

Dave: Kate, you must volunteer for an inter-agency task force. Think very hard before you respond. You wanna be a part of this?
Kate: Do we get an opportunity at the men responsible for today?
Matt: The men who were really responsible for today, yeah.

Kate: So, this is your specialty? The cartels in Mexico are your specialty?
Alejandro: Yeah. Yeah.
Kate: Is there anything I should know?
Alejandro: You’re asking me how a watch works. For now, just keep an eye on the time.

Alejandro [to Kate]: Listen, nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do. But in the end you will understand.

Kate: Is he CIA? Are you?
Matt: He’s a DOD advisor, just like me.
Kate: No, he’s not.
Matt: Just pay attention to Alejandro. If he says to do somethin’, just do it.
Kate: I’m not authorized to follow orders from Alejandro! Especially in Mexico!
Matt: Fine. Then stay here. But you don’t want to, do you?
Kate: I just wanna know what I’m getting into.
Matt: Kate, you volunteered to get on this train because you know you’re doing nothing in Phoenix. You’re just sweeping up a fucking mess. In six months, every single house you raid will be rigged with explosives. Do you want to find the guys responsible? Yes or no?
Kate: Yes.

Alejandro [to Kate motioning towards four naked men strung from an overpass by their feet]: Welcome to Jurez.
Agent: It’s brilliant what they do. When they mutilate a body like that, they make people think they must have been involved, they must have deserved such a death 'cause they did something. It’s brilliant what they do.

Agent: Those aren’t firecrackers.

Alejandro: Keep an eye out for the State Police. They’re not always the good guys.

Kate [aloud to herself after two cars are shot up and 8 men are dead]: What the fuck are we doing?

Agent: This is gonna be on the front page of every newspaper in America.
2nd Agent: No, it won’t. It won’t even make the papers in El Paso.

Matt: Got a little nutty, huh?
Kate: Nutty? Yeah, that was fucking illegal. You wanna start a war? You’re a fucking spook! And him! I mean, who the fuck is that?
Matt: Told you, you could stay here.
Kate: Jesus Christ. You just spray bullets at…Yeah, sure, there’s just fucking civilians everywhere. I’m not a soldier! This is not what I do!
Matt: Whoa! Don’t sell yourself short, all right? The reason Reggie’s home is I know he wasn’t ready for this. But he better get ready real quick because this is the future, Kate! Jurez is what happens when they dig in. This is it!
Kate: What am I doing here?
Matt: What you’re doing here is you’re giving us the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos. That’s what this is! In the meantime, just sponge everything up you see.

Steve: There’s rumors of a tunnel. Fausto’s main road into Arizona. If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, that’s the best place to cross. If you can find it. But time is against you. In three days, nobody will be where they are today.
[He motions towards a room]
Steve: Shall we?
Alejandro: No, it’s better if you don’t. Something happens in that room, it’s easier to say you didn’t see anything.[/b]

As with the “war on terror”, the “war on drugs” engages one or another rendition of torture.

[b]Reggie: Hey, Kate. Tell me what happened in El Paso.
Kate: We weren’t in El Paso. We were in Mexico.

Matt: What’s up? Everything okay? You look very serious.
Reggie: There’s “in the dark” and there’s the way you’re treating us. I want to know the objective or I walk, period.
Matt: Then go. I didn’t ask you to be here. She did.
Kate: I walk, too.
[Matt considers that]
Matt: Okasy, what do you wanna know?
Reggie: Everything.
Matt: Fuckin’ lawyers. All right. Guillermo told us about a tunnel east of Nogales, near Sasabe. Now we’re tryin’ to find out what areas near there migrants avoid, so we can find the tunnel. That better?
Kate: Guillermo, he just “told you” where the drug tunnel is? He just told you?
Matt: Guillermo didn’t have any other options. We send him back across the border, he’s a dead man. Now he gets to spend the next 30 years in an American prison, in relative safety.
Reggie: Just tell us the truth, man.
Matt: We are gonna make enough noise that Manuel Diaz is called back to Mexico to see his boss. That’s the truth.
Reggie: And then?
Matt: And then we know where his boss is.
Alejandro: His name is Fausto Alarcon – “El Verdugo”. Every day across that border, people are kidnapped or killed by his hand or with his blessing. To find him would be like discovering a vaccine. You understand the value of that?
Reggie: All right, we’re good. Just don’t keep us in the dark.

Reggie: I used to see guys like Matt in Iraq. Gotta be careful around these people. CIA’s not supposed to work this side of the fence.
Kate: He’s a DOD advisor.
Reggie: You really believe that? You need somebody watching your six, 'cause I promise you they aren’t.
Kate: You know, we’re not even scratching the surface doing what we’re doing. And they are.
Reggie: Well, you sure picked the motherfuckers to show us.

Matt: What’s the password?
Kate: Moron.

Kate: These are all Manuel Diaz’s accounts?
Agent: Yeah. Cash deposits made daily in $9,000 increments.
Kate: So, it doesn’t have to be reported.
Agent: That’s right.
Kate: And you can seize that?
Agent: I already have. And I’ll go through these wire transfer numbers and freeze all these accounts as well.
Banker: Here you go.
Agent: Damn, that’s smart.
Kate: What?
Agent: This is a bank line of credit. See, you make payments over what you owe, and it doesn’t show up as cash, it shows up as a negative loan balance. It’s never reported to anyone. IRS, DEA… This money is invisible.
Kate: How much does he have?
Agent: Take a look.
Kate: Oh, my God.

Kate: They just seized $17 million.
Matt: It’s a bogus bust, Kate.
Kate: What?
Matt: You can’t prosecute it. No one controls who deposits money in an account. An attorney will have that money back in a few months, but a lot of heads will roll before that.
Kate: But we can arrest Manuel for now. We can get him off the street.
Matt: We gotta get Manuel called back to Mexico. That’s the objective…
Kate: We have no jurisdiction in Mexico. We have nothing. We need to do something now.
Matt: Can’t arrest him.

Kate: $9,000 is deposited into this account every day in cash, for five years.
Dave: That’s not illegal. It’s suspect, but it isn’t illegal.
Kate: I think the IRS might think it’s illegal.
Dave: What do you want, Kate? What would you like done here?
Kate: I want to follow some semblance of procedure. That’s what I want. To build a prosecutable case.
Dave: We prosecuted more felony drug cases in this region last year than in the two previous years combined. Are you feeling that on the street? You getting the vibe that we’re winning?
Kate: No.
Dave [turning to Reggie]: Do you?
Reggie: No sir, I don’t.[/b]

The problem of course is that even given the tactics of the goon squads, we don’t exactly see a “winning vibe” now either, do we? As long as the drugs are illegal and the demand is high, there will be cartels around to make the big, big, big bucks on it.

[b]Government official [to Kate]: Advisors like Matt come in, they stir the pot, they cause the criminals to react and make mistakes. That’s how we build cases against the individuals that actually make a difference in this fight. It’s when they’re nervous, when they stop trusting their crews, when they move their money. These are all opportunities to strike. And that’s the purpose of people like Matt.
Dave: Kate, this isn’t something that I dreamed up myself. I don’t have the authority to hire advisors, or authorize joint agency missions, or fly agents from Air Force bases. Are you understanding me? These decisions are made far from here by officials elected to office, not appointed to them. So, if your fear is operating out of bounds, I am telling you, you are not. The boundary’s been moved.

Kate: You used me as bait.
Matt: Nah, you used yourself as bait. I told you not to go in the bank. You brought him back here, though. That was smart.
Kate: Yeah. Love how we’re gonna pretend like I planned this.
Matt: Why don’t you just write that in your report. Come on! This is good news! They’re gonna call Manuel back soon. Isn’t that the point?

Matt [to Ted]: You know what the beauty is of you being so beat to a pulp? 'Cause no one’s gonna notice a few more scratches. This is a new deal. I’m the one who decides whether your daughter’ll get Federal protection, Or whether we post your ex-wife’s address on the Internet. I decide whether you go to prison in a work camp in Missouri, or a kill house like Corcoran. This is where you negotiate how to survive, my friend.

Kate: I just tried to have sex with my hitman.
Alejandro: Nah, he’s no assassin…he just wanted to know what you know. They’re after usm not you.

Matt: All right, we’ll get you some extra gear.
Kate: We have tac gear in the car.
Matt: All right. Good. You guys will hang back when we get there, okay?
Kate: Then why are we going?
Matt: 'Cause CIA can’t operate within US borders without a domestic agency attached. I told you you’d be useful.
Kater: So, that’s it. That’s why I’m here.
Matt: Yeah, that’s it. That’s why you’re here.

Matt: Now, you listen. You went up the wrong tunnel. You saw things you shouldn’t have seen.
Kate: What is Medellin?
Matt: Medellin? Medellin refers to a time when one group controlled every aspect of the drug trade, providing a measure of order that we could control. And until somebody finds a way to convince 20% of the population to stop snorting and smoking that shit, order’s the best we can hope for. And what you saw up there, was Alejandro working toward returning that order.
Kate: Alejandro works for the fucking Colombian Cartel. He works for the competition.
Matt: Alejandro works for anyone who will point him toward the people who made him. Us. Them. Anyone who will turn him loose. So, he can get the person that cut off his wife’s head, and threw his daughter into a vat of acid. Yeah. That’s what we’re dealing with.
Kate: You can’t do this. You can’t. I’m sure as shit not the person you’re gonna hide it all behind.
Matt: You need to just take a breath.
Kate: I’m gonna fuckin’ talk.
Matt: No, you’re not.

Alejandro: Every night you have families killed. And yet, here you dine. Tonight should be no different.
Fausto: Do you think the people that sent you here are any different? Who do you think we learned it from? The grieving lawyer…Your wife, you think she’d be proud of what you’ve become?
Alejandro: Don’t forget about my daughter.
Fausto: You’re little girl. It wasn’t personal.
Alejandro: For me it is.
Fausto: Not in front of my boys.
Alejandro: Time to meet God.
[he shoots both boys and his wife dead]
Alejandro: Go ahead and finish your meal.
[he shoots Fausto dead]

Alejandro: I would recommend not standing on balconies for a while, Kate. Sit down. You look like a little girl when you’re scared. You remind me of the daughter they took away from me.
[long pause]
Alejandro: I need you to sign this piece of paper. It basically says that everything we did was done by the book.
Kate: I can’t sign that.
Alejandro: Sign it.
[she shakes her head]
Alejandro: It’s okay.
Kate: I can’t sign that.
[he puts a gun under her chin]
Kate: God!
Alejandro: You would be committing suicide, Kate.
[he wipes away her tears]
Alejandro: Come on. Sign it.
[she signs it]
Alejandro: You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now. [/b]

Here we go again: The fucked up writer – though it might well be a painter or a musician or an actor – bursting at the insufferable seams with all manner of emotional turmoil; and then trying somehow to contain it all and still function more or less “reasonably” out in the world with others.

And since this is said to be based in part on Philip Roth, we can pinpoint “the type” here with more precision.

On the other hand, as we all know, you don’t have to be “a writer” in order to be this type yourself. These days, it sort of just comes with the culture. It’s only more enhanced among those willing to go much, much deeper below the surface.

Here’s the thing though: most of us will never even come close to achieving the sort of life that makes the turmoil all that more pronounced. And protracted.

In other words, a few will argue that he has somehow earned the right to be this way. Not that they will ever convince me of this. Not that I ever actually earned my own dispensation.

His girlfriend Ashley is also in the arts. She’s a photographer. But: a commercial photographer. Which for some doesn’t count. And yet it is when we consider this “type” in a relationship that we recognize how the world will ever and always revolve solely around his own self-gratification.

And, as I note time and again here with respect to this sort of person, it is then utterly futile to discuss the relationship in terms of “the right thing to do”.

Actually, in some respects this film should have been called Listen Up Ashley. As far as I am concerned, her own thoughts and feeling were far, far more interesting to me.

As for Ike, he seems to be there mainly to remind us to make the distinction between a narcissist clearly on the way up and a narcissist clearly on the way down.

And then [of course] there is always the part about the money. And celebrity. And [given the protagonist here] sex.

Oh, and neuroses.

Finally, the part that revolves almost entirely around Philip just being a complete fucking asshole. And then this: whether or not you can get away with it.

This is a film that revolves around the dialogue. It either resonates with you or it doesn’t. I liked it a lot.

Look for the [at times] vast chasm between intellectual depth and emotional depth. Or, perhaps, more significantly, the realization that emotional depth itself is largely just an illusion.

IMDb

The character Ike is inspired by the author Philip Roth.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listen_Up_Philip
trailer: youtu.be/lyErKmF6xdo

LISTEN UP PHILIP [2014]
Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry

[b]Narrator: Philip was on this day meeting for lunch with Mona, his ex-girlfriend, whom he had dated throughout a portion of college. As with any punctual individual, Philip loathed when people ran late, which Mona typically was. By the time Mona made her way to Philip, he was in a state of rage and on the verge of storming out…

Philip: Things are gonna be pretty crazy for me after the release. In fact, this might be the last time I’m home for more than a week at a time for the next eight or possibly nine months. Actually, yeah, definitely. It’s just busy. Los Angeles in January, San Francisco… Powell’s in Portland, the whole West Coast thing, really. I’m told to expect big things out there.
Mona: You sound like you’re bragging.
Philip: That’s because I am bragging. And you’re doing a really hurtful job of sounding unfazed. And do you know why that is? Because you’re not pretending. You’re not interested in this or me, not even a little.
Mona: Why would you say that?
Philip: Because you never believed in me. And you don’t now.
Mona: Well, good for you.
Philip: No, not good for me. Great for me. You know, you told me many times, now that I think about it, actually, that my goals were unreasonable and foolhardy. Am I recalling this correctly? That my dream, the only dream I’ve had since I was 14 years old, to write and publish a novel of my own, wasn’t something I could just reach out and have. Hard work, you tell me. Years of working up from the bottom, you tell me. Well, you know something? You were wrong. Dead wrong, actually. About me and everything.

Parker: Apparently not everybody’s cut out for life in the fast lane.
Philip: You make me want back every minute of time I wasted with you, dreaming of a future we could share. Our declaration of principles. Remember them? Worthless now. I was so stupid to think you wanted it. I wanted it, you fucking asshole!
Parker: I did want it. I wanted it more than you could know. It’s not so easy for everybody, OK? We can’t all be as lucky and talented as the great Philip Lewis Friedman. You know what, though? I’m glad, I’m glad. Because if both of our goals had come true, then I’d be just as much of an insufferable piece of shit as you, you fuckin’ Jew bastard!

Narrator: Returning home to the apartment he shared with Ashley Kane, his girlfriend of two years, Philip found himself gripped by uncontrollable lust, temporarily forgetting the ambivalence and negligence towards him that she was increasingly incapable of concealing, as her success as a photographer in the art world led to consistent and lucrative commercial work.

Photographer: Do you wanna look in our wardrobe area? We can probably find you a lighter-weight jacket.
Philip: Let’s just keep this jacket on me and take the photograph sooner rather than later.
Photographer: We actually wanted to get a picture of you in front of the printing press, and then the portrait.
Philip: Is that from the 1920s?
Photographer: Yeah.
Philip: Well, I’m not, so let’s skip it and move on over to this yellow thing, all right? I know. “What an asshole.”

Philip: I’m not doing any press for the book at all. Readings, interviews. Nothing.
Editor: You cannot be serious.
Philip: Oh, quite.
Editor: That’s a horrible, horrible idea.
Philip: I don’t like the idea of being on display. My mind is made up. I wanna be left alone.

Editor: You’re fucking with other people’s money here.
Philip: Money, money, money. What about my integrity? You know, I can think of a few other important writers who also took a firm no-press position.
Editor: I just wanna know that you’ve thought it through thoroughly.
Philip: I haven’t. It’s a very impulsive decision, and I’m very pleased with myself for that.

Philip: It strikes me as unlikely, as you supported ideas like this when I still could have turned them down. I need the money.
Ashley: What I said was, it would be good for your career.
Philip: I thought you meant “career” with a dollar sign.

Narrator: It had been months since Ashley felt any real connection to Philip. He began to drift away while applying the finishing touches to his new book and had never come back. She tried her best to ignore the mounting signs, but the more often they were brought to her attention, the harder it became. The most difficult part of which was her own increasing ambivalence regarding her role in Philip’s life, or his in hers. She wanted him to want her, and the slowly dawning realization that he might not was enough to push her into emotionally unprecedented levels of doubt and misdirected anger.

Ike: You are selfish and unsentimental. Everyone knows this about you.
Philip: You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Ike: On the contrary. An admirable trait, if you ask me.

Melanie [to Philip]: I don’t find you charming. You are just like him, and I hope you learn to take responsibility for yourself before you destroy the lives of people who care about you.

Mona: I was surprised you called me.
Philip: I didn’t see any way that I couldn’t. Things are pretty hectic with my new book and everything.
Mona: That’s pretty cool.
Philip: No, it’s not cool. It’s fucking amazing. Do you know how few people reach this level? You seem to not care.
Mona: I really don’t. Did you ask me here so you could talk about yourself?
Philip: Next question.
Mona: Does talking about this stuff make you feel happy?
Philip: No. I find thinking about it all to be unfulfilling and exhausting. Does nothing for me.
Mona: Well, that’s how the rest of your life is gonna be. Unfulfilling and exhausting. I think success has made you ugly. I think you’ve gotten far too in touch with your selfish instincts, and it’s not healthy.

Melanie: Well, I speak from experience when I say that it is horrible to be treated in a way that only points out how meaningless you are.
Philip [seriously pondering it]: Never thought of it that way.

Narrator: Philip wished Ashley had not reminded him of how great it felt to be proud of her. His own relationship with success had forced him to grow out of feeling resentful towards her accomplishments. He was not prepared to lose that constant stream of enthusiasm.

Narrator: Despite being surrounded by people most of every day, Ashley was unable to connect to them in a way she considered meaningful and found herself passing through their lives, and her own, in a state of total isolation.

Philip [who shows up out of the blue]: I’m fairly certain I’m not welcome here.
Ashley: Ding-ding-ding.
Philip: It’s late. I’ve been sitting here waiting to make a scene for hours.
Ashely: What do you want?
Philip: I’m very lonely.
Ashley: That’s unfortunate.
Philip: I don’t like teaching creative writing as much as I assumed I would.
Ashley: Well, you’re a cruel, miserable person, so it makes sense you’d end up in a miserable situation.

Ashley [to Philip]: Just go back where you came from. I’m getting angry at myself, do you understand? Because it doesn’t even upset me to see you like this. I want you to leave and leave me alone. I don’t know why you are here, but I’m not interested, so don’t tell me. God, do you remember there was a time when we just…We wanted to go to sleep together and wake up together, every day, indefinitely. Now I don’t even give a shit if I ever see you again.

Narrator: Sitting meekly on the couch, Melanie embodied the high cost of isolation and detachment from loved ones. Unable to stand it any longer, Philip excused himself and returned to his pitiful life at the college.

Narrator: When Philip departed in late August for the college, Ike was remiss to find himself backsliding into a familiar pattern of boredom and tedium.

Narrator: His friendship with Philip eventually served as little other than a reminder of the absences in his life, and of their increasing presence and volume. Seeing Philip during the previous weekend had left Ike in an even lower state of self-pity, as he found himself unable to produce a worthwhile thought. So consumed was he with the solitude and self-imposed exile he had once coveted and manufactured for himself so meticulously but now experienced only as an infinitely replenishing prism of regret.

Narrator: The companionship of Melanie was, at best, diverting and, at worst, a constant reminder of the multitudes of relationships Ike had gleefully sabotaged over the years, all in the name of preserving and feeding his increasingly insatiable ego.

Ike: Melanie! Hey, hey, hey! Look who’s here! Hey! That’s my daughter.
Melanie: I hate you both.
[Philip motions as though to say he had nothing to do with it]
Melanie: Oh, didn’t you? Go fuck yourself.

Melanie: Why do you assume that she never talked to me?
Ike: Oh, I’m sure she was only too eager to fill your head with some inane, fictitious bullshit. But one thing I know for a fact, you only got one version of events told from the perspective of a very sad, very lonely, pathetic woman.
Melanie: You insult again. This is my mother you’re talking about.
Ike: And? Go on.
Melanie: You talk about her like she’s some leech that sucked you dry.
Ike: Yeah, well, she would have done, given half the chance. Her and everyone else. You know, she is my biggest regret, hmm? The strongest and saddest proof that you cannot change anyone, and that your first instinct about them will always be right.
Melanie: Yeah, well, that just proves that you yourself can’t be changed, either.
Ike: Yeah, well, much to my chagrin, I prove my own point. I always try to lead by example… To show everyone how I can put aside preconceptions and find new feelings, new ideas. But the innate ineffability of human disappointment overcomes my faith every time.

Narrator: The emotions which arose from the spectacular confrontation with his daughter enraged and excited Ike in such a way as he no longer felt possible. Philip’s unbridled respect and reverence for his idol, compounded with his youthful sense of rage and entitlement, had forced unwanted introspection upon Ike. And what he saw was a shamefully complacent old man, who had long since given up the forcefulness that had once motivated him to create some of his best work.

Narrator: The autumn months had brought about an overwhelming sense of shame in Ike, as he tried and failed to put out of his mind the vigour and dissatisfaction that once drove him to succeed, replaced with frustration, self-pity and disappointment.

Yvette: So, what do you do at night?
Philip: I stay home, I read, and I think. It’ll make my life harder if people see me differently. Does that make sense?
Yvette: And you only want to be thought of as a talented writer and not as a real person?
Philip: Hmm, yeah. Yeah. That’s probably about right. In fact, that’s exactly right.

Narrator: Philip wrote and mailed Ashley a letter, which read…
“I find myself alone again and again, and I’ve abandoned hope that this is something that can or will change. I would extend my apologies for neglecting to phone, were I not certain that they would be rejected. I offer the honest yet invented-sounding explanation that hearing your voice or anything about your current life would compound my already overwhelming sense of isolation and regret in a way I would consider crippling. My return date is set for December the 15th. I look forward to seeing what type of person I feel like by then.”
The letter was signed simply, “P”. She threw it away without ever opening the envelope.

Narrator: No longer fighting against his situation and finally at peace with it, he had noticed himself making friends where there before had been none, and experiencing feelings and emotions he had studiously blocked out from August through late October.
The result of which was his transformation into a tolerable person for whom the faculty began to care, to say nothing of the added benefit of winning Yvette’s affections, a goal of his since he first convinced himself of the extent to which she disliked him.

Philip: My uncle, who you saw in passing, raised me because both of my parents were killed in a car accident.
Yvette: Why are you telling me this?
Philip: Because I want you to contextualize my sadness. Put whatever you’re going through into perspective. My mom was pregnant at the time. Seven months. I was on the news. I’m telling you this to hurt you right now, because you’re trying to make me feel bad, horrible even, which I don’t appreciate. But I never will…Because nothing ever feels bad once you learn what that emotion is capable of. Now let’s not make a big deal about it. I usually don’t. But you really forced my hand on this. Do you know that expression? “Forced my hand”? It’s one of my favourites.

Narrator: Philip left the college much as he arrived, alone and devoid of meaningful connections with anybody else.

Narrator: He returned home to the city and was refused decency by Ashley, who had made the decision that Philip would not be allowed to re-enter either her home or her life, having come to the realization that she would no longer invest in somebody who would routinely cause her to feel terrible.

Narrator: Philip’s thoughts then turned to Ike, alone in his isolated home in the woods, a lifetime of enemies and scorched earth forcing him into a quasi-involuntarily self-imposed exile.

Narrator: Rejected by both Ashley and Yvette, Philip walked off on his own, with only the faintest notion of where to move forward from this, the low point of his adult life. And while he would remain close with Ike, a friendship that proved essential to the eventual completion and publication of several more novels, and later achieve an enviable level of wealth and success, from this day forward, Philip would never invest so much of himself in anybody else, instead living the rest of his life unwilling to so much as consider emotional honesty, and deeply wary of those who attempted to get close to him, a pattern of behaviour that ultimately left him an isolated and emotionless spectre, forever remaining a mystery, even to himself.[/b]

I was never particularly good at math. At least not once I got past algebra and geometry. So it is difficult for me to imagine a mind that is “brilliant” at it. In fact brilliant minds in and of themselves are rather mysterious to those of us that fall somewhere in the middle of the bell shaped curve. What then must it actually be like to have this “natural” facility at something? How is the brain wired differently in order to attain it? And why are particular brains always the exception to the rule here?

What makes it all that way?

This is basically one of those [more or less] true stories in which the way most of us will struggle to grasp “higher mathematics”, Nathan struggles to grasp everything else. The parts that we have more or less pinned down. On the other hand, there are any number of us with considerably less than brilliant minds that will succumb to disciplines like mathematics. And precisely because unlike so many other aspects of our lives, here we can live in the world of either/or.

Nathan is also prone to be really honest with others. To a fault you might say. Others can’t figure out why he doesn’t seem to give a shit about their feelings. In turn, he takes almost everything you say literally. In other words, he often doesn’t get the parts where you are only being ironic…or when you are only joking around.

Even as a young child Nathan was…different. In fact up to a point he reminds you a lot of Temple Grandin. He liked “patterns”.

And the relationship with his mom is rather fascinating to “figure out”. He seemed considerably closer to his dad [before he died]. Was that because he “loved” him more, or because his father knew how to more effectively “fit into” Nathan’s unique frame of mind. And how to make him laugh. Something he almost never does around anyone else. Or was it more that his father made an effort to communicate with him through numbers and mathematics.

And mom just didn’t.

One thing to note. At the IMO, almost all of the participants [students] are boys. Only the rare girl pops up from time to time. Is this just a reflection of casting…or is this the way it actually is. And if this reflects reality…why? What part is nature and what part is nurture?

IMDb

This movie is mainly based on Daniel Lightwing, a real life mathematician.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%2BY
trailer: youtu.be/taaqf_3El0A

X + Y [A BRILLIANT YOUNG MIND] 2014
Directed by Morgan Matthews

[b]Nathan [voiceover]: I find any communication of a non-mathematical nature very difficult. Because I don’t talk much, people think I don’t have anything to say, or that I’m stupid. And that’s not true. I have lots of things to say. I’m just afraid to say them. I know that I’m strange in lots of ways. I think I see the world in a different way to other people. I’ve always been like that.

Psychologist [holding up a toy dinosaur]: Would you like to play with it?
[Nathan shakes his head]
Psychologist: Are you scared it will eat you?
Nathan: No.
Psychologist: Is it because it’s a toy?
Nathan: No, it’s because stegosauruses aren’t carnivores.

Psychologist [to Nathan’s parents]: So, it’s positive. Nathan is certainly on the spectrum. Traits of autism combined with synaesthesia, sensitive to a change in light and pattern. These can be gifts, of course, but they do come with some big challenges, socially and emotionally, which will stay with Nathan all of his life. But there is no question that he’s a unique young man.

Michael [Nathan’s father]: You know, sometimes it might seem like we don’t always understand what it’s like to be you. It’s like you’ve got these special powers, like a wizard. And we’re just Muggles that don’t understand how you do it. It’s like a different language to us. But even though we don’t always understand each other, Nath, it doesn’t mean that any of us ever stops loving each other. Does that make sense?
[Nathan turns away]
Michael: Nathan, look at me. But you shouldn’t be afraid.[/b]

That’s when the minivan slams into them. And just like that his dad is dead. And his dad seems to be the only one he has ever been able to…love? Not at all like the more estranged relationship with his mom. Whatever that actually is.

[b]Julie [Mom, looking down at Nathan scribbling a bunch of strange figures in a notebook]: Gosh. That looks complicated. That’s not schoolwork then? Wait, why don’t you try and explain it to me? I might be able to help you.
Nathan: You can’t.
Julie: Why not?
Nathan: You’re not clever enough.

Headmaster: Mr. Humphreys just joined our maths department. He was a bit of a maths whizz when he was young, Nathan. He competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Julie: Olympiad?
Headmaster: Olympiad, yes. The IMO.
[he turns to Nathan]
Headmaster: Did you know you could win medals for maths, Nathan? Just like sport…
[he points to his head]
Headmaster: …only for people who are really, really strong up here instead.

Nathan: Why don’t you walk properly?
Martin: That’s very direct of you. I’ve got multiple sclerosis. What about you? Why are you weird?
Nathan: I’ve got special powers.
Martin: Can you fly?
Nathan: No.
Martin: Can you turn things to ice?
Nathan: No.
Martin: Are you really good at maths?
Nathan: Yes.
Martin: Yeah. Fair play. Well, listen, I should tell you, I’m not a very good teacher. I barely encourage myself to get out of bed, let alone inspire some kid with special powers who wants to spend all his spare time doing maths. So as long as we’re clear.
[he holds out his hand]
Nathan: What’s that for?
Martin: It’s to give it a shake. It’s my hand, isn’t it? It’s what men do when they agree.
Nathan: I don’t like doing that.
Martin: Yeah, well, we all have to do things we don’t like doing, but we fucking do them, don’t we? So give it here.
Nathan: What does “fucking” mean?
Martin: All in good time, son.

Nathan [reading from a book]: “The International Mathematical Olympiad is the most prestigious mathematical competition for high school students. It represents a great opportunity to see how they measure up against students from the rest of the world. China hold the record for 11 IMOs in which they have secured gold medals for all six members of their team.”

Nathan [reading]: The hardest problem ever at the IMO was question five in 1996. 'Let A, B, C, D, E, F be a convex hexagon such that AB is parallel to DE. BC is parallel to EF and CD is parallel to FA. Let RA, RC, RE denote the circum radii of triangles FAB, BCD, DEF respectively. And let P denote the perimeter of the hexagon. Prove that RA plus RC plus RE is greater than or equal to P over 2.

Nathan: Why did things go wrong for you, at the Olympiad?
Martin: There’s lots of reasons, really. My “thing” was kicking off around that time. My ailment. My MS. Cutting me down in the prime of my life. I just sort of lost it.
Nathan: I can’t lose it.
Martin: Nathan, you haven’t gotta prove anything, all right? What’s important is that you enjoy doing it, maths, and you do, don’t you? So whether you get on the team or not, you’re gonna do amazing things in the future.
Nathan: You haven’t.
Martin: Well, thanks a lot. You charming little bastard.

Isaac: Hey. How do you do?
Nathan: How do I do what?
Isaac: I mean, what’s your name?

Richard [on the bus to the airport]: Now, you are 16 of the cleverest young brains in this country. Now, outside you might be considered nerds or geeks or whatever the insult du jour might be. But here, you are among kindred spirits. Now, assuming you’re capable of basic arithmetic, you’ll know that there are six places available yet more than six of you. Which means that this, to a large extent, is about whittling you down. Now, we will be training with four other national teams in Taiwan. And after some delicate diplomatic negotiation, I can confirm that the Chinese will be one of them.

Nathan [on the plane]: 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610…
Rebecca [in a seat behind him]: …987, 1,597, 2,584. I like the Fibonacci sequence, too. Invaluable for music compositions. So you’re new. Fresh meat. How’s that going?

Rebecca: Most of these weirdos just wanna show off about how much maths junk they know.
[Nathan looks at her funny]
Rebecca: What?
Nathan: Nothing. It’s just I’m usually the weird one. They do all seem good at maths, though.
Rebecca: Yeah. Here you are neither weird nor the best mathematician, I’m afraid. You are painstakingly average.

Richard [looking into a classoom]: The Taiwanese. Currently below us in the rankings, but they’re our hosts, so we should be gracious. Now, here’s the real competition. The Chinese.
Student: Guys, check out the board. Is she messing around with the Goldbach Conjecture?
Richard: Maybe it’s what they do for fun.
Isaac: I love cracking unprovable theorems in my free time.
Luke: No one has proven that it’s unprovable.

Nathan [on the phone]: Everything’s different here and everyone’s cleverer than me.
Martin: Look, Nathan, it’s your first night away and… And first nights away are always really, really shit. I mean, it’s only a fortnight, innit?
Nathan: That’s 14 days.
Martin: And what’s 14?
Nathan: A positive integer.
Martin: Positive integer. So think positively. Which is the square root of?
Nathan: 196.
Martin: Whose prime factorisation is?
Nathan: Two squared by seven squared.

Isaac: Luke, I don’t care. Civilizations have used 10, not l2, digits to count for millennia.
Luke; Yes, for purely primitive reasons, and the fact that we have ten digits on our hands. My argument is that if we use base 12 it is an infinitely superior system, and more logical. It takes 12 months for the Earth to orbit the sun, there are 12 hours a night and 12 hours a day, and each of those hours there are 12 five-minute increments.
Isaac: And what do you think, Nathan? You a member of the dozenalist society?

Richard: Muirhead’s inequality and Schur’s inequality? It’s interesting stuff, Nathan, but you do over-complicate everything. Things can be much simpler than they initially appear. Did Mr. Humphreys not tell you that? Mind you, he never did quite live up to his potential, that one.
Nathan: It’s because his illness was getting worse.
Richard: His Illness? Is he still using that excuse? Stephen Hawking has done all right on far worse. No, I’m afraid it wasn’t Mr. Humphreys’ body that failed him, it was his character. He just couldn’t stay with it.

Counselor: …to be clear, these are not anti-depressants, Mr. Humphreys.
Martin: I mean, that’s good because I’m not depressed.
Counselor: You know, maybe you wanna change your mind about going to one of those groups I mentioned?
Martin: What, sit in a circle and listen to how crap everybody else’s life is?
Counselor: You know, sharing your issues might help.
Martin: Sharing my issues? Like how I hate wobbling about like a twat, how I’ve started to lose control of my bladder and how won’t be long before I lose control of my arse and start to shit myself. So, be careful, 'cause I could go at any second. And then, to top it all off…My dick doesn’t work.

Julie: Has he rung you again?
Martin: Nathan? No. Well, yeah. Now, look, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, calling me. It’s just he doesn’t think sometimes, does he?
Julie: Well, no, he does think a lot. Just mainly about maths. Which is fine, you know. He just thinks I’m a bit of an idiot because I failed at maths at school.

Zhang Mei [to Nathan]: The Chinese approach to maths. Look. This is called The Nine Chapters of Mathematical Art. This took more than 1,000 years to write. In China, mathematics is more than numbers. Um, it is like art.

Richard [to the class]: So…20 random cards are placed in a row all face-down. A move consists of turning a face-down card face-up and turning over the card immediately to the right. Show that no matter what the choice of cards to turn this sequence of moves must terminate. Nathan, hiding in the back won’t help you. Would you like to come up and show us?

Nathan [at the chalkboard…very very hesitantly…at first]: Okay, so we need to… We need to look at the cards not as cards, but as… As numbers. We can call face-down cards… One. Face-up cards… Zero. And initially it would be a sequence of ones as the cards are all face down. But after a while it would look something like that. And, as we can see, that is a binary number. And a move that consists of turning a face-down card face up and the card immediately to the right of it could be that a one followed by a one, will turn into a zero followed by a zero. That would be like that. Or it could be a one followed by a zero turning into a zero followed by a one. In either case, we can see that the number in binary is strictly decreasing.
Richard: And that means?
Nathan: Which means that the sequence must terminate.
Richard: Because?
Nathan: Because you can’t keep taking away from a positive integer without it turning negative.
Richard: No, you can’t. You definitely can’t. Good work.

Isaac: Its all about adaptability, Nathan. Sometimes you have to change your shape…to fit in.

Nathan: In China, do boys like me get bullied?
Zhang Mei: “Bullied”?
Nathan: You know, like when people treat you badly because you’re clever.
Zhang Mei: Why would they do that?
Nathan: I wish England was more like China.[/b]

Better England then, say, I don’t know, America?

[b]Luke [after cutting himself]: How did your mum and dad explain it to you? When they found out. I presume you’ve been diagnosed. Mine said it made me unique. “No one wants to be ordinary,” they said. It’s all right being weird as long as you’re gifted. But if you’re not gifted, then…that just leaves weird. Doesn’t it?
Nathan: You are gifted, Luke.
Luke: I don’t even enjoy it. Maths. Isn’t that stupid? What’s the point?

Richard [to Nathan]: When I speak to people of a non-mathematical nature, they always struggle with the notion that mathematics can be beautiful. But if beauty is truth and truth is beauty, well, then surely mathematics is the most beautiful thing of all. No? There is rare beauty in your work, Nathan. But you are unpredictable and inconsistent. Which worries me. You need to focus if you’re gonna win a medal. And don’t be distracted by your Chinese guest.[/b]

Here it begins to remind you somewhat of Searching For Bobby Fisher.

[b]Julie: Sounds to me like you quite like her.
Nathan: Of course I like her.
Julie: Yeah, no, I mean, like: More than you normally like things. You know, like more than…Ice cream. Or… Or maths.
Nathan: I don’t like anything more than I like maths.
Julie: Nathan, darling, I wish you’d just called me. Let me know that you’re okay, you know?
Nathan: Why?
Julie: Well, because, darling…I like you…more than I like ice cream.

Richard: Are you sure you’re not too rusty for all this?
Martin: I can manage a bit of shepherding. Been Nathan’s teacher for seven years, I wanna see this through. He’s a very sensitive kid.
Richard: Yeah, yeah, I suppose children are like animals. You get attached to them after a while.

Nathan: Zhang Mei said that she liked me.
Julie: Right. That’s a…That’s a good thing, isn’t it? And do you… Do you think that you might have those kind of feelings, too?
Nathan: I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work it out. But…I found a formula. I just can’t understand it.
Julie: Well, as far as I know, Nathan, no one ever has.
Nathan: I know that when…when I’m around her, my brain works differently. And my body feels strange and I don’t know what it means or why it matters.
Julie: Why it matters? It matters because…well, when…when somebody loves you, it means that they see something in you that they think is worth something. So it sort of…it adds value to you.[/b]

Just as with Nathan above, Yoav is thought to have a “brilliant mind”. On the other hand, unlike with Nathan there is no way to actually measure this much beyond the subjective reactions of others.

In other words, Yoav is thought to be a gifted poet. And yet how gifted can a poet actually be when he is 5 years old? He doesn’t even know how to write. Instead he dictates the poems to his nanny.

And the reaction here is solely that of his Kindergarten teacher, Nira. In fact, the movie is really about her. Yoav himself basically floats in and out of the plot more in the way of a surreal entity. As though we are not supposed to actually take him literally.

Also, as with most industrial nations in the modern world, the state of Israel tends to mass produce citizens far, far more interested in other things. For example, things that revolve around the usual junk that preoccupies all the rest of us: things themselves. Things that can be consumed, things that are purely “material”, things that relate almost enitrely to the Israeli rendition of “pop culture”.

Nira however is now more or less convinced that Yoav is the poet equivalent of Mozart. A prodigy that must [above all else] be protected [rescued] from a callous, cruel and uncaring world seen to be insensitive to souls such as his.

And then things become considerably more problematic when Nira [and the nanny] begin to recite Yoav’s poems as though they were their own. How are we to read between the lines here? How are we to even begin to grasp what is unfolding inside their heads? Let alone to judge it.

And then there is the scene in the kindergarten where the children sing a song about the “heroes of Israel”. How is the poet to capture that in verse? And what if, for example, the poet were a Palestinian?

From a review:

[b][i]Lapid puts Nira’s worldview in a larger context, “Israel society,” he says "has developed a hermetic way of looking at the world, and it justifies everything, like we are the victims, and we are in permanent danger, and it creates a perfect order.

Lapid compares Nira’s story to going to war “against a society that sanctifies profit, gain, richness, materialism,” a society in which “the radical’s rebellion suffers from the same diseases they try to heal, which is always the tragedy, and the inevitable destiny of the one who goes to war with his time.”[/i][/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindergarten_Teacher
trailer: youtu.be/QwvBw4AmyGk

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER [Haganenet] 2015
Written and directed by Nadav Lapid

[b]Yoav [to Miri, his nanny]: I have a poem. I have a poem. “Hagar is beautiful enough/Enough for me/Enough for me/Rain of gold falls upon her house/It is truly the son of God”

Nira [to her husband of a poem from Yoav]: Can you hear the strength of the words? The intensity of love? Do the words confuse you? And me?
Husband: It’s sad that a five-year old writes like that. Maybe he needs help.

Poetry teacher [to a group of aspiring poets]: I told you about the French poet Andre Breton. Every night before going to sleep, he put a note on his door: “Do not disturb, poet at work”.

Nira: Let me read you a poem I wrote: “Hagar is beautiful enough/Enough for me/Enough for me/Rain of gold falls upon her house/It is truly the son of God”[/b]

And immediately you’re intrigued: Why would she do this?
And then the others “discuss” it:

Woman: It overwhelmed me with warmth. “Rain of gold”.
Woman: I disagree. It’s scientific, cold, conceptual. If there’s a limit, there’s no beauty. Is there “enough” beauty?
Woman: But the “enough for me” defies the rain, the sun and God…which are never-ending. You have to look at it all.
Man: Unless “enough for me” is irony or a provocation.
Man: It’s not a provcation.
Man: Perhaps “provocation” is too much.
Man: It’s the ultimate provocation.
Poetry teacher: Nira, this poem was written by someone who’s seen tons of beauty. Too much beauty, too much passion. How very little is enough. He is sparing. Too much for me.

Meanwhile they have no idea that this is the poem of a 5 year old boy.

[b]Nira [to Yoav]: Hagar. Who is Hagar?

Nira: Yoav is acting strange.
Miri: He’s always been strange.
Nira: And his poem? Hagar?
Miri: He writes a poem like that once, even twice a week.
Nira: How does it happen?
Miri: He starts pacing from left to right like he’s stoned, then I know he is about to say: “I have a poem”. As quiet as he is, he goes crazy if we are interrupted. He’s nuts.
Nira: What does he write about? If it’s not too personal.
Miri: Peronal? He writes a lot about unrequited love. You’d think he was a 40-uyear old spinster.

Miri: Yoav’s mom ran off to Boston with her lover.
Nira: Yoav told me she is dead.
Miri: She gave up custody. A filthy divorce. He’s a whoremonger, she’s a lesbian, he’s on coke…Google it “Ammon Pollack – divorce”.

Nira: Do you have the text to the poem that he wrote…the one you read at the audition.
Miri: I’ll read it to you.
[she poses in the room as though on the stage auditioning]
Miri: “As the matador raises his red cape, the balcony seems to freeze/As the bull rushes out of its gate, the crowd freezes/I too was in the crowd/And just as the bull was ready to gore and the matador was ready to thrust his sword I came back to my homeland/I thought: Why do thoughts drift so far away?”[/b]

Which Nira then procedes to read as her own at the next meeting of poets. And as before it is then “dissected” by others…

Woman: I hate this indifference towards slaughtering animals just to amuse the beastly crowd.
Man: Great poetry has a moral point of view.
Man: And where is yours?
Woman: I loved the beginning, but when the bull gored, you crerated an anticipatiom, which obliged a statement.
Man: Which you then evaded.

…in precisely the manner in which many poets steer clear of. Instead, the poem is to be “undertood” [experienced] aesthetically, subjunctively, intuitively.

Nira [increasingly obsessed with Yoav]: Where does the poet look at the world from? Is the man in the poems always you? Yoav, do you understand what I am saying?

He certainly doesn’t appear to.

[b]Nari [after picking Yoav up]: The yard from the height of an adult.
[she then puts him down and they both get down on their knees low to the ground]
Nari: This is the yard from the height of a cat.
[she looks over seriously at him]
Nari: You’ll think about it?
Yoav: Can I go back to my nap now?

Yoav [pacing back and forth at the kindergarten]: “Quick is the lion, and orange/I will have time to describe him in the morning when I return to find him/The defeated warrior, I couldn’t see him/Is he still…is he still wandering there, impatient, looking for revenge/An eye for an eye, death for death”
Nari [earnestly]: What was that poem? What was it about?

Nira: Miri, we have a problem. We’re losing poems. It just happened. I ran to him, but only heard the end…I’m sure this happens late at night, too. A young woman like you must know those moments before falling asleep, so dark and full of desires. So many great poems have been written then.[/b]

Miri isn’t impressed.

[b]Nira: I’ll get to the point. I’m here on behalf of your nephew Yoav. His nanny, Miri, the actress told me that you opened Yoav up to the world of words.
Aaron: Guilty as charged.
Nira: When I look around me, at my 5 year old pupils, I realize how hard it is to be a poet in this world. Being a poet in our world is opposing the nature of the world. Finding Yoav is not only a great joy. It’s a calling.

Nari: Miri is a very problematic figure for Yoav. Not only does this actress not grasp his talent, but I must tell you that Miri uses Yoav’s poems for her auditions, pretending she is the author. A thief!
Aaron: “Tonight we read poems but the world does not read poems tonight, neither on other nights. Not even the most beautiful. Never again will the world read even the most beautiful poem, even of we plead with it, it will not agree.”
Nari [nodding eagerly]: Meir Wieseltier.

Yoav [on the phone]: I have a poem.
Nira: I’m with you.
Yoav: “Thus spoke to me the wise man Ching Chang: There are those who say love is gained by gold/There are those who say that love is gained ny hand/There are those who say that love is gained by force/But he knows that love is nothing but the wind/For amongst all the winds that blow through man it is tossed into the heart, without thought/Without thought all is lost/Without thought the sea is purple/Without thought the sky is black/Without thought one cannot cross mountains/That same gust of wind that is love blows right through you without a thought/So you could love your mother’s killer/Thus spoke to me the wise man Ching Chang when he talked of love.”

Nira [on the phone to Yoav]: You know a teacher is allowed to call a pupil.

Nira [to Yoav’s father Ammon]: I wanted to talk to you about your son. Almost as talented as Mozart, who at four, according to his biography, would suck candies and hum scores for an entire orchestra. But Mozart was nurtured by kings who stuffed him with candies, and Yoav has no one. He’s a poet in an era that hates poets.
[the father says nothing]
Nira: Who will protect Yoav? Even his nanny, Miri, looks at him as if he were a dwarf on TV, and uses his poems, pretending she is the author.
Ammon: I’ll be brief. In 30 minutes this place will be mayhem. Basically, my son’s poetry is of no interest to me. I don’t mind him amusing himself, but I won’t encourage this tendency. I’m a good father. I love my son. And I want him to have a normal life. You saw his uncle, a 50 year old correcting the spelling of 25 year old illiterate kids promoted as journalists because no one wants to write for a paper, and who get 300 shekels an article at best. I can’t stand bitter people, losers, leeches, whiners, blind people who can’t see where the world is headed. [/b]

And we know where that is, don’t we? To a place where the point of poetry seems less and less relevant.

The poetry teacher [at a poetry rerading to the audience]: One of our friends, a writer, said today: “If no one is buying poetry books and if the governemnt doesn’t care, they hate culture, then you the poets have no choice. Surrender, adapt, disappear. Without tears, nor whimpers, bring on the end of the world.” The facism that has arisen here, like any fascism, despises poets that think…In these obscure times, every poem is a miracle.

Then Yoav reads his poems. Or, rather, tries to. What the fuck was that all about?!

Nari reads a text message from Yoav’s father: “This is Ammon, Yoav’s father. Ode, your poetry teacher, told me everything. You’re a sick woman. I considered involving the police. You’ll never see Yoav again. If you do, I’ll crush you.”

Which just begs the question: Why would she have Yoav read the poems that she had claimed to have written herself? I wonder: What am I missing here?

[b]Yoav [after Nari has kidnapped him]: I have a poem. “Between two lives, throughout life, during life, an odd moment arrives when you learn to part from what you’ve seen before/Because it no longer exists for you/Because you need to forget/The moment of parting is a moment of death/Parting comes like a winter night in a scorching summer/It undoubtedly towers over the gray banality like a distant cousin/Parting is unusual/It has a certain charm and it has a touch of pride/Parting.”

Nira [from insde the bathroom]: Yoav?
Yoav: Yes.
Nira: Did you lock the door?
Yoav: Yes.
Nira: On purpose?
Yoav: Yes.
Nira: Open it for me. Everything I do is for you. We’ll fly away from here. I’ll take care of you. You won’t need to worry about anything. This world will erase you, Yoav. There’s no place in this world for people like you. In two years there will be nothing left of you. You 'll become a shadow.[/b]

Meanwhile…

Police [on the phone]: Police. I’m Oren, how may I help you?
Yoav: Hello, my name is Yoav Pollack. My kindergartin teacher, Nira, she kidnapped me.
Police: Is she armed?
Yoav: No, she’s in the shower.

Segue to Yoav being delivered safe and sound [by the police] back to “normal” society.

Steve Jobs. You might have heard of him. He was a founder of a corporation called Apple. You might have heard of that too.

Your Apple though, not mine.

My Apple was founded by the Beatles. Apple Corps. And back then it was argued [idealistically] that the point of it was to establish a new environment for creating a new music – one that went beyond the “business as usual” model that invariably revolved solely around making a buck.

Your Apple however is more about the creation of a company that revolves around inventing the technology that we use to communicate any and all content. In fact, the content is basically beside the point. Or, perhaps, to put it another way, it is content that is clearly in sync with our new Holy Trinity: consumption, pop culture and celebrity.

But who was Steve Jobs? And how did he become the man that we think we know he was?

That is basically why films like this are made. We know generally who he was but few of us have any really clear understanding of what actually lies below the surface. Many of course use his computer technology. And many are aware of just how instrumental he was in regard to creating the modern world that we live in today.

But: What about all the rest?

Actually though this is not really that sort of film at all. We don’t go back to the day he was born. Instead, we focus in on three crucial junctures in his adult life. The rest we sort of have to figure out for ourselves.

Is there then a teleology here? An ontology? Something that goes beyond a subjective narrative of one particular existential life?

For example: Was he a “good” man more or less than he was a “bad” man? Or, as with all the rest of us lesser mortals, does that depend entirely on who you ask?

Basically, this is the “inside story” of shit that folks like me don’t even really care about. Or care about considerably less than the manner in which identity, conflicting value judgments and political power are far more intriguing to discuss. To discuss in this particular context. But then time and again they cut to the crowds in the hall stamping their feet in anticipation of the next Great Technological Unveiling. As though in the end it really wasn’t just about embracing the next generation of that Holy Trinity.

Either that or [one suspects] the Defense Department.

As for Job’s “personal life” he was generally as fucked up as all the rest of us. Or maybe it was because he was adopted.

As for all the shit that passed back and forth between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, I’m backing Woz. I think.

Of course all of this basically antedates the Smartphone. Not to mention Steve Job’s death.[/b]

IMDb

[b]The three sequences in the film were filmed on 16mm, 35mm, and digital to illustrate the advancement in Apple’s technology across the 16 years depicted of Jobs’ life.

Michael Fassbender said in an interview that Christian Bale who exited the project in November 2014 would have been “perfect” to play Steve Jobs. “I thought to myself: Christian Bale is perfect, why isn’t he doing it?” The actor told The Hollywood Reporter while promoting the film in London. “I actually called him up and told him that myself.”

Several memorable scenes in the movie never happened in real life. Some of these are the scene where Jobs’ little daughter uses his computer to draw a picture, the reconciliation between John Sculley and Jobs, most of the arguments with Steve Wozniak and the final scene between Jobs and his now-grown up daughter. On the other hand, the infamous scene where it’s implied that Jobs splashes his feet in the toilet bowl to calm himself down did actually happen. This was one of Jobs’ infamous quirks and Michael Fassbender himself asked to do it in the movie, since it wasn’t in Sorkin’s script. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/aEr6K1bwIVs

STEVE JOBS [2015]
Directed by Danny Boyle

Arthur C. Clarke [being interviewed on television in front of a room-sized computer]: And with that movie 2001, you’re projecting us into the 21st century. I brought along my son Jonathan who in the year 2001 will be the same age as I am now. Maybe he will be better adjusted to this kind of world that you’re trying to portray. The big difference, when he grows up…In fact, if we wanted to wait till the year 2001… He will have in his own house not a computer as big as this, but at least a console through which he can talk to his friendly local computer and get all the information he needs for his everyday life, like his bank statements, his theater reservations, all the information you need in the course of living in a complex modern society. This will be in a compact form in his own house. He’ll have a television screen, like these here, and a keyboard. And he’ll talk to the computer and get information from it. And he’ll take it as much for granted as we take the telephone.
Reporter: I wonder, though, what sort of a life would it be like in social terms? I mean, if our whole life is built around the computer, do we become a computer-dependent society?
Clarke: In some ways, but they will also enrich our society because it will make it possible for us to live, really, anywhere we like. Any businessman and executive could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through a device like this. And this is a wonderful thing. It means we won’t have to be stuck in cities. We’ll be able to live out in the country or wherever we please.

Again, it is just technology. Which can then be used to sustain any sort of business at all. For example you can run a sweat shop using it. Or facilitate a sex-slave operation.

[b]Steve: We need the computer to say hello.
Andy: You’re not hearing me. It’s not going to say hello.
Steve: Just fix it.
Andy: Fix it?
Steve: Yeah.
Andy: In 40 minutes?
Steve: Fix it.
Andy: I can’t.
Steve: Who’s the person who can?
Andy: I’m the person who can, and I can’t.

Steve: Two days ago, we ran a Super Bowl ad that could’ve won the Oscar for Best Short Film. There are more people who can tell you about the ad than can tell you who won the game.
Joanna: I understand, but the ad said the Mac was gonna save the world. It didn’t say it was gonna say hello.

Andy: Part of the problem is we can recompile, but if it’s a hardware problem, we can’t get into the back.
Joanna: Why not?
Andy [to Steve] Do you wanna tell her or should I?
Joanna: Why can’t he get into the machine?
Andy: You need special tools.
Joanna: What kind of special tools? Just take a screwdriver.
Andy: He didn’t want users to be able to open it. You need special tools.

Steve: The exit signs have to be off or we’re not gonna get a full blackout.
Andrea: We’ve spoken to the building manager and the fire marshal.
Steve: And?
Andrea: They’re absolutely no way they’re letting us turn the exit signs off.
Steve: I’ll pay whatever the fine is.
Andrea: The fine is they’re gonna come in and tell everyone to leave.
Steve: You explained to the fire marshal that we’re in here changing the world.
Andrea: Well…
Steve: Did you?
Andrea: Yes, but unless we can also change the properties of fire, he doesn’t care.
Joanna: Steve…
Steve: If a fire causes a stampede to the unmarked exits, it will have been well worth it for those who survive. For those who don’t, less so, but still pretty good.
Andrea: Listen…
Steve: I need it to go black, real black. Get rid of the exit signs, and don’t let me know how you did it.

Joanna: You need special tools to open the Mac?
Steve: You knew it was a closed system.
Joanna: I didn’t know literally. Jesus. And if you keep alienating people for no reason, there’s gonna be no one left for it to say hello to.
Steve: It’s not for no reason. We blow this and IBM will own the next 50 years like a Batman villain. Remember the phone company? That’s what Bell was called, “the phone company.” IBM will be the computer company. Ten years later they’ll be the information company, and that’s very bad for the human race

Joanna: We’re not gonna sell a million in the first 90 days.
Steve: Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone is waiting for the Mac.
Joanna: Maybe. But what happens when they find out that for $2,495, there’s nothing you can do with it?

Steve: You can complain about memory or you can complain about price, but you can’t do both at the same time. Memory is what costs money…Look at their faces when they see what it is. They won’t know what they’re looking at or why they like it, but they’ll know they want it.

Lisa [to Joanna]: My dad named a computer after me.
Steve: I’m not your…Actually, do you know what a coincidence is, Lisa? Like if you met someone. You made a new friend and her name was Lisa too. That would be a coincidence. “Lisa” stands for “Local Integrated Systems Architecture.” L-I-S-A. It’s a coincidence.
Joanna: You about done?

Lisa: So it was the other way around. I was named after the computer.
Steve: Nothing was named after anybody. It’s a coincidence.
Joanna [to Lisa]: Come on.

Chrissann [reading from Time magazine]: “Jobs insists”… I am quoting… “…twenty-eight percent of the male population of the United States could be the father.”
Steve: I wasn’t saying you’ve slept with 28% of American men. I was using an algorithm based on the blood test which said there was a 94.1% chance that I’m the father.

Chrissann: I applied for welfare yesterday.
Steve: I’m sorry?
Chrissann: Hello! I said I applied for welfare yesterday. The Time article said your Apple stock was worth $441 million, and I wanted to ask you how you felt about that.
Steve: Well, I feel like Apple stock has been dramatically undervalued.
Chrissann: Your daughter and her mother…
Steve: Chrisann…
Chrissann: …are on welfare. We’re living in a hovel in Menlo Park. We can’t pay the heating bills. She sleeps in a parka. Your daughter…
Steve: She’s not my daughter!
Chrissann: Because, as reported by Time magazine, I’ve slept with 28% of the men in America?
Steve: No.
Chrissann: All of them, exactly nine months before Lisa was born!![/b]

Even if Lisa isn’t his daughter, the guy here isn’t any less than a complete fucking scumbag here, right?

[b]Andy [back to the “hello” crisis]: We’re not a pit crew at Daytona. This can’t be fixed in seconds.
Steve: You didn’t have seconds, you had three weeks. The universe was created in a third of that time.
Andy: Well, someday you’ll have to tell us how you did it.

Steve: Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna announce the names of everyone who designed the launch demo. I’m gonna introduce everyone and ask them to stand up. The bag was designed by Susan Kare. The Macintosh font that’s scrolling across the screen was designed by Steve Capps. The starry night and skywriting was Bruce Horn. MacPaint, MacWrite, Alice, down to the calculator. And then I’m gonna say the voice demo that didn’t work was designed by Andy Hertzfeld.
Andy: Steve…
Steve: Five-in-six is your chance of surviving the first round of Russian roulette, and you’ve reversed those odds. So unless you wanna be disgraced in front of your friends, family, colleagues, stockholders and the press, I wouldn’t stand here arguing. I’d go try and get some more bullets out of the gun. Do it, Andy!

Steve: Woz wants me to acknowledge the Apple II team.
Joanna: You must be able to see that she looks like you.

Steve [to Joanna about the Mac launch]: The two most significant events of the twentieth century: the Allies win the war, and this.

Steve: The test said I…
Joanna: I don’t care what the test said. I don’t care about 94.1% or the insane algorithm you used to get to 28% of American men.
Steve: I’m buying her a new house. I’m giving her money.
Joanna: There’s a small girl who believes you’re her father. That’s all. That’s all the math there is. She believes it. What are you gonna do about that?
Steve: God sent his only son on a suicide mission, but we like him anyway because he made trees.[/b]

Ego and money. Isn’t that basically what he is all about? Well, up to this point.

[b]Woz: The slots are what allowed the Apple II to run, for just one example, VisiCalc, which from my guess single-handedly sold between 200,000 and 300,000 machines. They want slots.
Steve: They don’t get a vote. When Dylan wrote “Shelter from the Storm,” he didn’t ask people to contribute to the lyrics. Plays don’t stop so the playwright can ask the audience what scene they’d like to see next.

Woz: Computers aren’t paintings.
Steve: Fuck you. I’m gonna say “fuck you” every time you say that until you either die or stop.
Woz: Computers aren’t paintings.
Steve: Fuck you. Yes, they are, and what I want is a closed system. End-to-end control. Completely incompatible with anything.
Woz: Computers aren’t supposed to have human flaws. I’m not going to build this one with yours.

Joanna: Please, you have to tell me why it’s so important for it to say “hello”.
Steve: Hollywood, they make computers scary things. See how this reminds you of a friendly face? That the disk slot is a goofy grin? It’s warm and it’s playful and it needs to say “hello”!
Joanna: The computer in 2001 said “hello” all the time and it still scared the shit out of me.

John: Did we use skinheads as extras on that Superbowel commercial? A couple of people have told me that.
Steve: Yeah.
John: We paid skinheads? I’ve got skinheads on my payroll?
Steve: They had a look you wanted.
John: The skinheads?
Steve: Yeah.
John: Okay, let’s keep that to ourselves.[/b]

Or, sure, they could have been Nazis. Or probably were.

[b]Reporter [on TV]: The Macintosh, Apple’s near mythological home computer, has gotten off to a rocky start in its battle with industry titan IBM. With sales originally projected to be a million in the first quarter, Apple has sold only 35,000 of the user-friendly machines in the months since it’s been available to customers.
Reporter: The insistence by Steve Jobs that it have what’s called end-to-end control, which is a way of saying that it’s not compatible with most outside hardware or software, is the Shakespearean flaw in a machine that had potential.
Reporter: Apple Computers closed two of its factories today in the wake of disappointing sales. Do you know how many Macs were sold last month? 500.
Reporter: In a move that surprised some but not all on Wall Street, the board of directors of Apple Computers voted today to fire its cofounder Steve Jobs. Did he jump or was he pushed?

Woz: You can’t write code… you’re not an engineer… you’re not a designer…you can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen from Xerox Parc. Jef Raskin was the leader of the Mac team before you threw him off his own project! Someone else designed the box! So how come ten times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?
Steve: I play the orchestra, and you’re a good musician. You sit right there and you’re the best in your row.
Woz: I came here to clear the air. Do you know why I came here?
Steve: Didn’t you just answer that?
Woz: I came here 'cause you’re gonna get killed. Your computer’s gonna fail. You got a college and university advisory board telling you they need a powerful work station for two to three thousand. You priced NeXT at sixty-five hundred, and that doesn’t include the optional three thousand dollar hardrive which people will discover isn’t optional, because the optical disk is too weak to do anything, and the twenty-five hundred dollar laser printer brings the total to twelve thousand dollars, and in the entire world you are the only person that cares that it’s housed in a perfect cube. You’re gonna get killed. And I came here to stand next to you while that happens 'cause that’s what friends do… that’s what men do. I don’t need your pass. We go back, so don’t talk to me like I’m other people. I’m the only one that knows that this guy here is someone you invented. I’m standing by you because that perfect cube - that does nothing - is about to be the single biggest failure in the history of personal computing.
Steve: Tell me something else I don’t know.

Joanna: I’m begging you to manage expectations.
Steve: Have I ever let you down?
Joanna: Every single goddamn time.
Steve: Then I’m due.

Steve [of the NeXT Cube]: I guess, in layman’s terms, you’d have to say we don’t have an OS.
Joel: An operating system? What do you mean?
Steve: Well, the OS is what runs the computer. In fact, it sort of is the computer.
Joel: How has it been running? How’s it gonna run this morning? What do you mean, you don’t have an OS?
Steve: It’s like this. Avie Tevanian is our chief software designer, and he wrote a demo program. It’s like we built a great car, but we haven’t built the engine. So we put a golf cart battery in there to make it go for a bit. All this computer knows how to do right now is demonstrate itself.
Joel: You’re telling me the only thing you’ve built is a black cube?
Steve: Yes. Yeah. But isn’t it the coolest black cube you’ve ever seen?

Steve: The board’s concerns that we didn’t show the product in the Suoerbowl ad?
John: Among other things, but my question was…
Steve: What other things? I’m asking because I’m curious. You said “among other things.”
John: Among other things, it was set in a dystopian galaxy. It took place on a planet where we don’t live. It was dark and the opposite of our brand. And we didn’t show the product. People talked about the ad but most of them didn’t know what we were selling.
Steve: The Mac needs to sell for 1,995.
John: There is no market research telling us the Mac is failing because it’s overpriced. It’s telling us that people don’t like it because they think it doesn’t do anything. It’s closed, end-to-end. We didn’t know it wasn’t what people wanted, but it isn’t. They want slots, they want choices, they want options. The way we buy stereos…mix and match components.
Steve: John, listen to me. Whoever said the customer is always right was, I promise you, a customer.

John: It had skinheads in it.
Steve: She was liberating them.
John: Liberating the skinheads.
Steve: The ad didn’t have anything to do with fucking skinheads. We used them as fucking extras. Nobody even knows they were skinheads.
John: I’m just saying the board had concerns…
Steve: You invented lifestyle advertising. And our brand was my brand.
John: My job is to make a recommendation to the board. We showed a lot of happy people drinking Pepsi. We didn’t say the world was going to end if you bought a Dr. Pepper. And we showed the product. We showed it being opened, we showed it being poured, being consumed.

Steve: You didn’t want the ad because you were trying to kill the Mac two months before it launched.
John: You are fucking delusional.
Steve: Can I mention something to you?
John: Sure.
Steve: I have no earthly idea why you’re here.
John: The story of why and how you left Apple, which is quickly becoming mythologized, isn’t true.
Steve: I’m gonna take this to the board myself.
John: Don’t do that.
Steve: I am doing that.
John: You can’t.
Steve: Why?
John: They believe you’re no longer necessary to this company.[/b]

This exchange keeps going back and forth in time. There’s the part about, what, being creative? innovative? “cool”?..and the part about dollars and cents.

[b]John: I can’t put it more simply than this: We need to put our resources into updating the Apple II.
Steve: By taking resources from the Mac.
John: It’s failing. That’s a fact.
Steve: It’s overpriced.
John: There is no evidence…
Steve: I’m the evidence! I’m the world’s leading expert on the Mac, John! What’s your resume?
John: You’re issuing contradictory instructions, you’re insubordinate, you make people miserable, our top engineers are fleeing to Sun, Dell, HP, Wall Street doesn’t know who’s driving the bus, we’ve lost hundreds of millions in value and I’m the CEO of Apple, Steve, that’s my resume!
Steve: But before that, you sold carbonated sugar water right? I sat in a fucking garage with Wozniak and invented the future, because artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.
John: Alright, well… this guy’s outta control. I’m perfectly willing to hand in my resignation tonight. But if you want me to stay, you can’t have Steve. Settle him out. He can keep a share of stock so he gets our newsletter. I’d like the secretary to call for a vote.
Steve: I fucking dare you.

Steve: Now, I absolutely understand why you’re upset. And I want people to know the truth too.
Joanna: It’s time.
Steve: Got it.
John: You’re gonna end me, aren’t you?
Steve: You’re being ridiculous. I’m gonna sit center court and watch you do it yourself. Then I’m gonna order a nice meal with a '55 Margaux and sign some autographs.
John: Jesus Christ…
Steve: You want some advice, Pepsi Generation? Don’t send Woz out to slap me around in the press. Anybody else… you, Markkula, Arthur Rock. Anyone but Rain Man.

Joanna [to Steve]: When did you change your mind and start building the Steve Jobs Revenge Machine?

Steve [to Joanna]: You remember Skylab? It was an unmanned satellite NASA sent up in the early '70s on a data gathering mission. The thing is, when they sent it up, they didn’t know yet how they were gonna get it back. But they felt like they were close enough that in the eight years it was gonna be up there, they’d figure it out. They’re on their way now. They didn’t. So after eight years, it came crashing down in a thousand-mile swath across the Indian Ocean.[/b]

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Reporter [on TV]: More than a year after it was first unveiled to industry insiders, the NeXT Computer is finally available in stores.
Reporter: And it appears to be two strikes in a row for Steve Jobs. Students and educators are finding it difficult to justify the machine’s high cost.
Reporter: So much for the black cube. NeXT just sold its factory to Canon and laid off half its employees.
Tom Brokaw: In the world of computers, it’s kill or be killed…
Dan Rather: Apple Computer has fallen on hard times…
Connie Chung: It is laying off about 2,500 people.
Reporter: Apple is continuing to lose market share, with no new innovations in the pipeline except the Newton, a pet project of CEO John Sculley. If you really want to be mobile, you want a Newton PDA. But then again, maybe you don’t.
Reporter: In 1980, Apple had 30% of the market. Today, Apple has only 3.2 percent.

But then comes the internet. Talk about a game changer. And Steve Jobs returns to Apple with the iMac.

[b]Bill Gates on TV: “The only thing Apple’s providing now is leadership in colors.”
Joanna: Don’t worry about it.
Steve: What does Bill Gates have against me? He dropped out of a better school than I dropped out of.
Joanna: If I give you some real projections, will you promise not to repeat them from the stage?
Steve: What do you mean, “real projections”? What have you been giving me?
Joanna: Conservative projections.
Steve: Marketing’s been lying to me?
Joanna: We’ve been managing expectations so that you don’t not.
Steve: What are the real projections?
Joanna: We’re gonna sell a million units in the first 90 days. 20,000 a month after that.
Steve: Holy shit.
Joanna: What’s more, 32% of the sales are going to go to people buying a computer for the first time. And 12% are going to people using some kind of Windows machine. That’s what Bill Gates has against you.

Andy: Why do you want people to dislike you?
Steve: I don’t want people to dislike me. I’m indifferent to whether they dislike me.
Andy: Since it doesn’t matter, I always have.
Steve: Really? I’ve always liked you a lot. That’s too bad.

Joel [of a huge photograph on the wall]: Who’s this one?
Steve: Alan Turing. Single-handedly won World War II and, for an encore, invented the computer. He won’t be part of the campaign though.
Joel: Why not?
Steve: 'Cause you just had to ask me who he was.

Joel: He killed himself by taking a bite of a poison apple… Alan Turing.
Steve: Yeah. There should be statues of that man. His name should be on the lips of schoolchildren.
Joel: The rainbow flag apple with a bite taken out… That’s where it came from?
Steve: No, we picked it off a list of friendly-sounding words. But wouldn’t it be great if that had been the story behind it?

Steve: This is a product launch, not a luncheon. The last thing I want to do is connect the iMac to…
Woz: To the only successful product that this company has ever made. I’m sorry to be blunt, but that happens to be the truth. The Lisa was a failure. The Macintosh was a failure. I don’t like talking like this, but I am tired of being Ringo when I know I was John.
Steve: Everybody loves Ringo.
Woz: And I’m tired of being patronized by you.
Steve; You think John became John by winning a raffle, Woz? You think he tricked somebody or hit George Harrison over the head? He was John because he was John.

Steve: You came a half-inch from putting this company out of business. Now who do I see about that? I’m letting you keep your job. You get a pass.
Woz: You know, when people used to ask me what the difference was between me and Steve Jobs, I would say Steve was the big-picture guy and I liked a solid workbench. When people ask me what the difference is now, I say “Steve’s an asshole.” Your products are better than you are, brother.
Steve: That’s the idea, brother. And knowing that, that’s the difference.
Woz: It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.

Joanna: Do you remember the cover of Time?
Steve: What are you talking about?
Joanna: What was on the cover?
DSteve: A computer.
Joanna: No. It was a sculpture of a computer. It was a sculpture. Time would have had to have commissioned it months in advance. You were never in the conversation for Man of the Year. Nobody lost you anything. So what else are you sure about?

Steve: A lawyer couple adopted me first, then gave me back after a month. They changed their mind. Then my parents adopted me. My biological mother had stipulated that whoever took me had to be college-educated, wealthy and Catholic. Paul and Clara Jobs were none of those things, so my biological mother wouldn’t sign the adoption papers.
John: What happened?
Steve: There was a legal battle that went on for a while. My mother said she refused to love me for the first year. You know, in case they had to give me back.
John: You can’t refuse to love someone, Steve.
Steve: Yeah, it turns out you can.
John: What the hell can a one-month-old do that’s so bad his parents give him back?

Lisa: I have Internet access at school. I read an old copy of Time, and I asked my mom some questions about my family history.
Steve; That was…Time wrote a mangled piece of journal. You were never supposed to read that.
Lisa: I had two different Harvard statisticians try to reverse-engineer the equation that you came up with to prove that 28% of American men could be my father.
Steve: Honey, I…
Lisa: You know, my mother might be a troubled woman, but what’s your excuse? That’s why I’m not impressed with your story, Dad. It’s that you knew what I was going through, and you didn’t do anything about it, and that makes you an unconscionable coward. And not for nothing, but “think” is a verb, all right, making “different” an adverb. You’re asking people to think differently. And you can talk about the Bauhaus movement and Braun and “Simplicity is sophistication” and Issey Miyake uniforms and Bob Dylan lyrics all you want, but that thing…
[she points to a photograph of the iMac]
Lisa: …looks like Judy Jetson’s Easy-Bake oven.

Steve: The computer. The Lisa. You know what it stood for? Behind my back, at the office, you know what it stood for?
Lisa: Local Integrated System Architecture. I was five. Why couldn’t you just lie?
Steve: I did. Of course it was named after you. Local Integrated System Architecture doesn’t even mean anything.
Lisa: Why’d you say it wasn’t all those years?
Steve: I honestly don’t know.
Lisa: Why’d you say you weren’t my father?
Steve: I’m poorly made.

Steve: I’m gonna put music in your pocket.
Lisa: What?
Steve: A hundred songs. A thousand songs. Five hundred songs. Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand songs. Right in your pocket. Because I can’t stand looking at that ridiculous Walkman anymore. You’re carrying around a brick playing a cassette tape. We’re not savages. I’m gonna put a thousand songs in your pocket.
Lisa: You can do that? [/b]

American youth.

Past present future.

Does it really make much difference? After all, the one thing all these “kids” share in common is this: that it is really, really hard for them to imagine sinking much lower than they already are. Indeed, what do the starving children of Africa have to complain about next to them?

Really, just ask them.

And [this being a movie] their lives all seem to revolve more or less incessantly around the same common denominator: Sex.

Fucking in other words.

As in:
Minnie: I had sex today… Holy shit!

She’s 15. He’s 40. And her mother’s boyfriend.

That’s the first line of the film. Then it really only becomes a matter of how “hip” or how “cool” the characters are. And, since the plot unfolds here on the cusp between hippes and punk rockers [and in San Francisco no less] you just know that these self-obsessed boys and girls are going to be in the general vicinity of, say, wasted.

Then there’s the “Patty Hearst” thing: screenprism.com/insights/article … tty-hearst

It’s often all about [as it often always is] what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate behavior when you are looking for a way as a “kid” to find meaning and purpose in your life. It’s just that for “American youth” this can become either considersably more simplistic or considerably more complex than for all the other kids in all the other places.

Not that I have a way in which to actually demonstraste that this is true. So, why don’t you demonstrate to me that it is not.

This is not one for those who have 1] never been in love because 2] they never wanted to be. Instead, this explores love in all the ways that only someone who is born and bred in the heartland of “American youth” could never not imagine it to be.

There’s just nothing else there. Folks ever preoccuped with either, myself or I.

It is basically then just one more an exploration into the mind of a precocious “teenager” who may not be nearly as sophisticated as she likes to imagine that she it. And then in how vulnerable she can become when she is suddenly in way, way over her head. Or on how much more perceptive when, after getting what she thought whe wanted, she finds out she really didn’t want it after all. More love and human remains. Age then being the least of it here.

IMDb

All the sex scenes between Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård’s characters were shot in the first week of filming. They had two weeks of rehearsal, discussing the emotional relationship between them, then they just got on set and did it.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary … enage_Girl
trailer: youtu.be/M9LNsSjnqBM

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL [2015]
Written and directed by Marielle Heller

[b]Minnie [making a tape recording]: My name is Minnie Goetze. I’m a 15-year-old living in San Francisco, California, recording this onto a cassette tape because my life has gotten really crazy of late, and I need to tell someone about it. If you’re listening to this without my permission, please stop now. Just stop. Okay? So… I don’t remember being born. I was a very ugly child. My appearance has not improved, so I suppose it was a lucky break when he was attracted by my youthfulness.

Minnie: You’re far away.
Monroe [her mother’s boyfriend]: You just gave me a hard-on.
Minnie [after sucking on his finger]: I did?
Monroe [chuckling]: Yeah, I’m hard. You don’t believe me?
[he puts her hand down his pants]
Monroe: It’s hard. See?
Minnie [voicover]: It didn’t feel too hard to me. It was still skin.

Monroe: I can’t believe you said you want me to fuck you. Do you really want me to fuck you?
Minnie: None of your fucking business.
Monroe: You really do want me to fuck you, don’t you? You really fucking want me to fucking fuck you.
Minnie [voiceover]: I didn’t know if I wanted him or anyone else to fuck me, but I was afraid to pass up the chance 'cause I may never get another.

Minnie [voiceover]: I tried giving him a blowjob in the car. He said he wants to fuck me, but we can’t tonight. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is this what it feels like for someone to love you? Somebody wants me. Somebody wants to have sex with me.[/b]

She’s 15, he’s 40. You do the math.

[b]Monroe [after Minnie makes a cross on his leg in blood]: I didn’t know you were a virgin.

Charlotte [mom]: Minnie, Minnie, come watch with us. Yeah, it’s history in the making.
Reporter [on TV]…by a bank camera taking part in an armed robbery…
Charlotte [to the TV]: Oh, she’s not mentally ill. Fuck this guy. Just because she left her bourgeois family to start over. I know how you feel, Patty.
Minnie: What kind of person falls in love with the people who kidnap them?

Minnie [voiceover]: What’s the point of living if nobody loves you? Nobody sees you. Nobody touches you. I wish I were older than I am. I’m so alone. It feels like there are little weights hanging from my heart that swing and tug every time I move, every time the wind blows.

Minnie [voiceover]: I want someone to be so totally in love with me that they would feel like they would die if I were gone. Maybe Monroe could love me like that…
[cut to Minnie lying in Monroe’s arms]
Minnie: What’s your favorite color?
Monroe: I don’t know. Blue? Why are you asking me such stupid questions?
Minnie [voiceover]: …or maybe not.

Minnie [recording]: Monroe says I exude sexuality. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and I can’t believe what I see. I just realized I’ve had breasts for three full years now!

Minnie [recording]: He’s fucked me seven times now. All I can think about is the fucking.

Charlotte [of Patty Hearst]: Even if she knew what she was doing in the bank, she was a prisoner. Kidnapped, raped.
Monroe: Come on, she’s a victim? Mmm, I don’t know. I guess it does seem kind of counter-progressive or something.
Charlotte: It’s bullshit. It’s fascist, misogynistic bullshit!

Charlotte: Kimmie’s kind of white trash, don’t you think?
Minnie: She is not.
Charlotte: No, I mean it in a good way. You know, she’s like down-to-earth.

Charlotte: You know, you’re not gonna have that bod forever, Min. I know that’s not very feminist of me to say, but you might be happier if you put it out there a little bit, you know? Wear some makeup? Wear a skirt once in a while? Jesus. Get some attention. You have a kind of power, you know. You just…You don’t know it yet.[/b]

No? Let’s ask Monroe.

[b]Monroe [after having sex with Minnie]: We have to stop this.
Minnie: Why would you say that? Do you think I’m fat?
(Monroe chuckles)
Minnie: You’re so fucking confusing with your adult codes and bullshit. I’m used to the more honest means of communication used between children. You know, I’m almost still a child. You know?
Monroe: Yeah, I know that.

Minnie [voiceover]: Maybe I should just ignore everything. But I like sex. I wanna get laid right now. I really like getting fucked. Does everyone think about fucking as much as I do?

Minnie: Get your hands off me. Get your hands off me or…
Monroe: Or what?
Minnie: Or I’m gonna tell my mother!
Monroe [suddenly serious]: Get dressed.
Minnie: You can’t take it?
Monroe: Get dressed, I’m taking you home.
Minnie: No!
Monroe: You ruined it, Minnie! You’re a fucking child! I should tell your mother!

Minnie [voiceover]: What we did gets me sick. It was so pornographic. The sexual nature of Kimmie Minter is a viscous cervical mucus that always welcomes mating.[/b]

And with Monroe no less.

[b]Charlotte: Well, have you!
Monroe: Are you crazy? She’s just a kid.
Charlotte: Yeah, she may just be a kid, but she’s still got tits and ass!

Minnie [voiceover]: Everything is so loveless and mediocre…

Monroe [from the shower] I love you.
Minnie [voiceover]: He was vulnerable and weak. It was all I’d ever wanted, and now I had no desire for it.
Monroe: You know, I was thinking, if you can keep it together, we could really date when you turn 18. I mean, it’s not that far away.[/b]

She’s already out the door.

[b]Kimmie: You scared? To try it?
Minnie: No. I’m not afraid of anything.
Kimmie: No?
Minnie: No. I’m not afraid of knives or guns, or fire or poison, rape, or being kidnapped and tortured, or brainwashed, hypnotized like that Patty Hearst girl.
Kimmie: Are you afraid of me?
Minnie: A little.

Monroe: Okay. Uh… Minnie… Your mother and I, we’ve been talking, and she, or we, thought that…maybe you and I should get married.
Minnie: You’re drunk.
Monroe: I’m not drunk. I mean, we get along pretty well. Don’t you think? I think we do.
Charlotte: That’s not the point, that you get along with her. That’s not the point. The point is that you porked my daughter, and so you’re gonna marry her. That’s the point.
Minnie: Mom.
Charlotte: What? It’s true, right? He porked you? He porked you, and so now he’s gotta marry you!
Monroe: People are staring.
Charlotte: Who cares? Fuck you. What, are you embarrassed? You embarrassed that you porked my daughter?
Minnie: Mom, are you crazy? Stop saying “pork”!

Minnie [voiceover]: It’s not a lit-up streetlight hazy darkness like most nights. It is a black crisp night and my eyes are like headlights. I’ve become nothing, finally. No home, no school, no money.

Minnie: What’s not a big deal?
Kimmie: It’ll be very quick. He only takes a few minutes.

Minnie [voiceover]: I always thought I wanted to be exactly like my mom. But she thinks she needs a man to be happy. I don’t.

Minnie [voiceover]: So, maybe nobody loves me. Maybe nobody will ever love me. But maybe it’s not about being loved by somebody else.[/b]

Again, she is 15 fucking years old. Not that I don’t completely agree. Always be your own best friend. I know that I always have been. And I can assure that, among others things, I have never, ever been bored.

Imagine it…

You are sexually abused as a child. And not just by anyone. Here the man who abused you goes on to become a best-selling author. He writes a book in which the sexual abuse becomes part of the plot. You become part of the plot.

And it is now your task to edit the book.

You told your parents but after confronting him he manages to convince them that your side of the story reflects little more than a little girl with an over-active imagination.

Back and forth we go: The past and the present. How one evolves into the other. And how both are instrumental in providing us with options to a possible future. It’s a classic example of how the dots are connected between them from a particular point of view.

It is also an exploration into the gap between the abuser exercising his power to coerce sex from a completely vulnerable child and the dire consequences that can follow the child throughout her lifetime. The emotional and psychological travail that never really ever goes away. Only here the abuser is not some thug on the street, but a man who has become a part of the world that her family thrives in: the world of books and authors and publishing.

In other words, he “seduces” her. He “charms” her. And then in her mind [down the road with other men] she can come to equate this sort of thing [someone “loving” her] with someone tricking her only in order to fuck her. Or maybe he even tricks himself into believing that it is not just sex.

Still, when push comes to shove this is just one snapshot depicting a set of circumstances that might be experienced [and then reacted to] in any number of different ways.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Book
trailer: youtu.be/W4pCpK7da1E

THE GIRL IN THE BOOK [2015]
Written and directed by Marya Cohn

[b]Milan: I would like to read your story.
Alice [as a child]: It’s nothing.
Milan: Why don’t you let me decide.

Milan [to Alice]: Tell me about your day…

Alice: I read your new bio. It talked about your teaching a lot.
Milan: Yes, I enjoy it.
Alice: I’m sure.
Milan: You were my first and best student.
Alice [clearly distraught]: I gotta go…

Alice: I shouldn’t have told you. It’s not a big deal.
Sadie: He hurt you Allie. You don’t do publicity for someone who hurt you.
Alice: It’s my job.
Sadie; I thought your job was to find and edit new and wonderful novels.
Alice: Tell that to Jack.

Milan: What are you writing?
Alice [as a child]: My journal.
[Milan gestures to let him read it…Alice shakes her head]
Milan: I want to know you.
Alice: You can’t.
Milan: One page.
[next thing you know she is in his arms on the bed]
Milan: I have to get up. My heart is pounding. I have to get up.

Dad: Where the hell did it come from. It reeks.
Alice [as a child]: I think it’s Milan’s.
Dad: Milan’s…?
Alice: He was here this afternoon.
Dad: Well…did he bring by a new draft?
Alice: He…he came to see me.
Dad: You…?
Alice: Yeah, he’s been helping me with my writing.
Dad [perplexed]: What? Since when.
Alice: A while.
Dad: Well, yiou couldn’t have a better mentor. You’re a lucky girl.
Alice: Yeah…
Dad: I expect great things of you.

Emmett: Is this what you do every Saturday morning, you just sit here and read sbout other people’s lives?
Alice: No, that is pretty much a full time occupation.
Emmett: You know it’s pointless right?
Alice: Yes, I do.

Alice: You can’t write in front of me.
Emmett: What?
Alice: I’m serious. If anyone is going to write in my apartment, it’s going to be me.
Emmett: But you don’t.
Alice: Thank you for pointing that out.
Emmett: Come on, it’s not like there’s a finite number of words in the room and if I use them all there won’t be enough left for you.
Alice: Why does everything always have to make so much sense…

Interviewer: What do you think makes Waking Eyes so perennially popular.
Milan: What I think it is is that everyone has been a teenager and we all know how out of kilter it can be.
[cut to Alice watching from another room]

Emmett [to Alice after he finds out about Keith]: I will not let you make me as crazy as you are.

Sadie: You know I love you almost more than anyone…but I’m starting not to like you very much. And I’ll never forgive you for that. I need to not see you for a while.
Alice: What about the book?
Sadie: Screw you, Alice.

Milan [of Alice’s boyfriend]: Did he make you come? I want to make you come. I want to be the first person to make you come.

Alice: It’s just something that I do. I’ve always done. A look in a guy’s eyes like he wants me…I don’t know. It’s the one thing that makes me feel real.
Emmett: I want you.
Alice: No…
Emmett: So…?
Alice: So it wears off. I start wondering what’s wrong with this guy. Why can’t he do better?

Mom: Alice…Alice, what it is it?
Alice [as a child]: I have to tell you something…

Alice: Stop the car. Please stop the car!!

Alice: Is this the new book?
Milan: Yeah.
Alice: Whose life did you appropriate this time?

Alice: Concrete details. You must give me concrete details to make it real.
Milan: I know…I know at that age everything seems enormous.
Alice: Your warm heavy arms around me. The smoky taste of your tongue in my mouth.
Milan: I was helping you.
Alice: The feel of your hard-on against my thigh.
Milan: But nothing really happened.
Alice: Yes it did!
Milan: Yes, but you seemed to enjoy it at the time.
Alice; You were one of the few people who actually seemed to see me. To make me feel real and important.
Milan: But you are.
Alice: You used me. Then you abandoned me. You made me feel like I was nothing all over again.

Emmett: You’re the girl in the book aren’t you?
Alice: Not anymore.[/b]

The first thing that might pop into your head watching the film is this: Is it based on true story? Now, the author of the book the film is based on insists that it is not. Still, over the years, we have come across any number of stories in the news in which someone has in fact been kidnapped and held captive somewhere in one or another rendition of “the room”. So we know that it might just as well have been.

And then we marvel at the gap that must exist between “reality” before and “reality” after escaping. Especially given the fact that for the child the only world that he has ever known is the one inside the room. Just a shed in the kidnapper’s back yard. It is a world that his mother has to create for him. It is a world that becomes whatever his mother tells him that it is. And then, after the escape, he has to adjust to a “real world” that most of us just take for granted in the first five years of our lives.

Jack is allowed to watch TV, so he knows there are creatures that look like him populating all of the different shows. But these creatures apparently only exist in the TV world. Or so his mother tells him. Meanwhile he is made to sleep in the closest when his biological father comes into the room from time to time to rape his mother.

It’s surreal in large part for Jack because he has always been taught that what he sees on TV are just pictures of people and things that only exist in TV Land. Whereas what so many “normal” children see on TV is something that they see as “on TV” but as “real” too. One can only imagine than a child living like this not just through his 5th birthday, but through his 15th…or beyond.

And then [of course] there’s the part where they become The Celebrities. They’re on the news. Everywhere. Everyone wants a piece of their story. Everyone has something to sell. Everyone wants their chance to be part of all the hoopla. And then once you become A Celebrity in the “modern world” you can find yourself imprisoned in just another kind of Room.

IMDb

[b]Jacob Tremblay, though an experienced actor, could not bring himself to yell at Brie Larson in the scene where he is angry about his birthday cake having no candles. Finally the director had the entire cast and crew start jumping up and down yelling and screaming until he was able to do it himself.

Brie Larson isolated herself in her home for a month without a phone or internet and followed a strict diet in order to get a sense of what Ma and Jack were going through. Larson has said that because she considers herself an introvert who prefers to stay at home, she thought that her month of isolation would be a vacation, but towards the last week she became very depressed and would cry all day.

In several interviews, the author of the book on which the movie is based has said the story is not based on any specific real-life case.

In preparation for her profoundly complicated character portrayal, Brie Larson spent hours with a trauma specialist researching the psyche of one incarcerated to the extreme degree of her character “Ma.” This was not the kind of information that could be readily found in a Google search.

Director Lenny Abrahamson saw more than 2000 child actors before he came across Jacob Tremblay’s audition tape. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/PPZqF_TPTGs

ROOM [2015]
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

[b]Ma: Ssh. Go back to sleep.
Jack [reciting to himself]: Once upon a time, before I came, you cried and cried and watched TV all day, until you were a zombie. But then I zoomed down from heaven, through skylight, into Room. Whoosh-pshew! And I was kicking you from the inside. Boom, boom! And then I shot out onto Rug with my eyes wide open, and you cutt-ed the cord and said, “Hello, Jack!”

Jack: Is bad tooth hurting?
Ma: Mmhmm, but you know mind over matter.
Jack: If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Ma: We don’t have any candles, I know.
Jack: You said a birthday cake, or real. That means candles on fire.
Ma: Jack… It’s okay without the candles. It’s still a birthday cake.
Jack: You should ask for candles for a Sunday treat, not dumb jeans.
Ma: I’m sorry. You know, I have to ask for stuff that we really need, stuff that he can get easily.
Jack: But old Nick gets anything, by magic.

Jack [thinking to himself]: There’s room, then outer space, with all the TV planets, then heaven. Plant is real, but not trees. Spiders are real, and one time the mosquito that was sucking my blood. But squirrels and dogs are just TV, except Lucky. He’s my dog who might come some day. Monsters are too big to be real, and the sea. TV persons are flat and made of colors. But me and you are real.

Jack: Mouse is my friend, and you splattered him dead.
Ma: No, I didn’t. He’s hunky-dory.
Jack: Are you tricking me?
Ma: No, Jack, I swear. He is safe at home in the backyard with his ma.
Jack: What backyard? Mouse lives in a yard in TV?

Jack: Where do we go when we’re asleep?
Ma: Right here in room.
Jack: But dreams…Do we go to, into TV for dreaming?
Ma: Mm-mm. We’re never anywhere but here.

Man: Maybe if you could stop complaining and be a little grateful.
Ma: Thank you.
Man: God, it’s fucking pulling teeth sometimes.
Ma: Thank you for everything.
Man: You just have no idea about the world of today.
Ma: No.
Man: No. Who pays the power bill? Who pays for everything?
Ma: You.
Man: Mm-hmm. And how do you think I’m gonna be able to keep doing that?
Ma: What do you mean?
Man: Nothing.
Ma: No what does that mean?
Man: Six months. I’ve been laid off. Six months. Yeah. If you had to worry your little head…
Ma: What are you gonna do about it? Are you looking for a job?
Man: There are no fucking jobs!

Ma: Jack, do you remember the mouse? He’s on the other side of this wall.
Jack: What other side?
Ma: Jack, there’s two sides to everything.
Jack: Not on an octagon.
Ma: Yeah, but…
Jack: An octagon has eight sides
Ma: But a wall, okay, a wall’s like this, see? And we’re on the inside and mouse is on the outside.
Jack: In outer space?
Ma: No, in the world. It’s much closer than outer space.
Jack: I can’t see the outside-side.
Ma: Listen, I know that I told you something else before, but you were much younger. I didn’t think that you could understand, but now you’re so old, you’re so smart. I know that you can get this. Where do you think that old Nick gets our food?
Jack: From TV by magic!
Ma: There is no magic. What you see on TV, those are pictures of real things, of real people. It’s real stuff…other people, they have faces like us. Those are pictures of real things, and all the other stuff you see on there, that’s real, too. That’s real oceans, real trees, real cats, dogs.
Jack: No way!

Jack: You’re just tricking me.
Ma: No, I’m not. Jack. I couldn’t explain it before, because you were too small. You were too small to understand, so I had to make up a story, but… But now I’m doing the opposite, okay? I’m doing the opposite of lying. I am un-lying, because you’re five now. You’re five, and you’re old enough to understand what the world is. You have to understand. You have to understand. We can’t keep living like this. You need to help me. Jack: I want to be four again.

Ma: When I was I was 17…I was walking home from school…
Jack: Where was I?
Ma: You were still up in heaven. But there was a guy. He pretended that his dog was sick.
Jack: What guy?
Ma: Old Nick. We call him “old Nick.” I don’t know what his real name is. But he pretended his dog was sick…
Jack: What’s the dog’s name?
Ma; Jack, there wasn’t a dog. He was trying to trick me, okay? There wasn’t a dog. Old Nick stole me.
Jack: I want a different story!
Ma: No! This is the story that you get. He put me in his garden shed. Here. Room is the shed. He’s locked the door. He’s the only one that knows the code… You know, the secret numbers that open the door? He’s the only one that knows, and I’ve been locked in here for seven years. I’ve been in here for seven years!!! Do you understand?
Jack: This story’s boring!

Ma [to Jack]: Now, we’ve got a chance. We’ve nearly missed it, but we’ve got our chance. So you’re gonna help me. You’re gonna help me trick old Nick.

Ma: You’re gonna love it.
Jack: What?
Ma: The world.

Jack [voiceover]: I’ve been in the world 37 hours. I’ve seen pancakes, and a stairs, and birds, and windows, and hundreds of cars. And clouds, and police, and doctors, and grandma and grandpa. But Ma says they don’t live together in the hammock house anymore. Grandma lives there with her friend Leo now. And Grandpa lives far away. I’ve seen persons with different faces, and bigness, and smells, talking all together. The world’s like all TV planets on at the same time, so I don’t know which way to look and listen. There’s doors and… more doors. And behind all the doors, there’s another inside, and another outside. And things happen, happen, happening. It never stops. Plus, the world’s always changing brightness, and hotness. And there’s invisible germs floating everywhere. When I was small, I only knew small things. But now I’m five, I know everything!

Lawyer So, the other thing that we need to discuss is some sort of media strategy.
Joy: God, we’re not ready for talking like that, not yet, so…
Lawyer: Okay, um… There’s gonna be expenses moving forward and a “prime time” interview, just one “prime time” interview, means a lot of money.

Joy [to her mother]: I’m sorry that I’m not nice anymore, but you know what? Maybe if your voice saying “be nice” hadn’t been in my head, then maybe I wouldn’t have helped the guy with the fucking sick dog!

Talk Show Hostess: When he’s older, will you tell Jack about his father?
Joy: Jack’s not his.
Talk Show Hostess: He’s not his. So are you saying that there were other men?
Joy: No! No. Um… A father is… a man who loves his child.
Talk Show Hostess: Of course. That’s so true in a very real sense, but the… the biological relationship that you…
Joy: That’s not a relationship. Jack is… Is nobody’s but mine.
Talk Show Hostess: When he was born, did it… Did it ever occur to you to ask your captor to take Jack away?
Joy: Away?
Talk Show Hostess: Well, to take him to a hospital, say, leave him there, where he could found?
Joy: Why… why would I do that?
Talk Show Hostess: So Jack could be free. Now, this is the ultimate sacrifice… And I understand that… But did you think about him having a normal childhood?
Joy: But he had me.
Talk Show Hostess: Of course he did. But was that the best thing for him?

Jack [voiceover]: There’s so much of place in the world. There’s less time, because the time has to be spread extra thin over all the places, like butter. So all the persons say, “hurry up. Let’s get going. Pick up the pace. Finish up now.”

Jack [voiceover]: When I was four, I didn’t even know about the world, and now me and ma are going to live in it forever and ever until we’re dead. This is a street in a city in a country called America, and earth. That’s a blue and green planet, always spinning, so I don’t know why we don’t fall off. Then, there’s outer space. And nobody knows where’s heaven. Ma and I have decided that because we don’t know what we like, we get to try everything. There are so many things out here. And sometimes, it’s scary, but that’s okay, because it’s still just you and me.

Jack: Can we go back to Room?
Ma: Jack…
Jack: Just for a visit.

Jack: Is this Room?
Ma: Yeah.
Jack: Has it gotten shrinked? Where is everything?
Ma: Taken for evidence. Proof that we were here.
Jack: It’s because door’s open.
Ma: What?
Jack: It can’t really be Room if door’s open.
Ma: Do you want me to close it?
Jack: Nah.
Ma: Jack, can we go?
Jack: Bye, plant. Bye, chair number one. Bye, chair number two. Bye, table. Bye, wardrobe. Bye, sink. Bye-bye, skylight. Ma, say bye-bye to Room.[/b]