philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

I know people who listen to this movie, rather than watch it.

Free will. Behaviorism. Dystopia. Communism. One of [no doubt] several dozen “themes” permeating the film. For me it is about every single one of them of course.

When I first watched this the crime rate in America was bursting at the seam. Lots of discussion regarding what to do about it. And trust me: Everyone assumed that those who committed crimes had free will. The danger posed by Communism was also a strawman of choice. What to do about evil from the perspective of those with any number of options afforded them. Also, B.F. Skinner was all the rage.

Political prisoners? They were around too in greater abundance.

IMDb

[b]Anthony Burgess originally sold the movie rights to Mick Jagger for $500 when he needed quick cash. Jagger intended to make it with The Rolling Stones as the droogs, but then re-sold the rights for a much larger amount.

Alex performing “Singing in the Rain” as he attacks the writer and his wife was not scripted. Stanley Kubrick spent four days experimenting with this scene, finding it too conventional. Eventually he approached Malcolm McDowell and asked him if he could dance. They tried the scene again, this time with McDowell dancing and singing the only song he could remember. Kubrick was so amused that he swiftly bought the rights to “Singing in the Rain” for $10,000.

The language spoken by Alex and his droogs is author Anthony Burgess’s invention, “Nadsat”: a mix of English, Russian and slang. Stanley Kubrick was afraid that they had used too much of it, and that the movie would not be accessible. The original edition of the novel suffered from similar criticisms, and a Nadsat glossary appendix was added to the second and subsequent editions.

The title was translated into Serbo-Croatian as “The Orange From Hell”.

In the police station scene when Mr Deltoid (Aubrey Morris) spits in Alex’s face, it is actually Steven Berkoff doing the spitting. After several takes, Morris complained to Stanley Kubrick that he had run out of saliva, and Berkoff volunteered his services until Kubrick’s cameras captured the perfect ‘spit-shot’.

The doctor standing over Alex as he is being forced to watch violent films was a real doctor, ensuring that Malcolm McDowell’s eyes didn’t dry up.

Anthony Burgess was raised a strict Roman Catholic and originally wrote his novel as a parable about Christian free will and forgiveness.[/b]

wiki

[b]The film’s central moral question (as in many of Burgess’ books) is the definition of “goodness” and whether it makes sense to use aversion therapy to stop immoral behaviour.[3] Stanley Kubrick, writing in Saturday Review, described the film as

“…a social satire dealing with the question of whether behavioural psychology and psychological conditioning are dangerous new weapons for a totalitarian government to use to impose vast controls on its citizens and turn them into little more than robots.”

Similarly on the film production’s call sheet (cited at greater length above), Kubrick wrote

“It is a story of the dubious redemption of a teenage delinquent by condition-reflex therapy. It is at the same time a running lecture on free-will.”

Anthony Burgess had mixed feelings about the cinema version of his novel, publicly saying he loved Malcolm McDowell and Michael Bates, and the use of music; he praised it as “brilliant”, even so brilliant that it might be dangerous. Despite this enthusiasm, he was concerned that it lacked the novel’s redemptive final chapter, an absence he blamed upon his American publisher (this chapter being omitted in all US editions of the novel prior to 1986) and not Kubrick.[/b]

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick
From the book by Anthony Burgess

[b]Alex: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

…

Tramp [pinned down by Alex]: Well, go on, do me in you bastard cowards! I don’t want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this!
Alex: Oh? And what’s so stinking about it?
Tramp: It’s a stinking world because there’s no law and order anymore! It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old, like you done. Oh, it’s no world for an old man any longer. What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon, and men spinning around the earth, and there’s not no attention paid to earthly law and order no more.

…

Alex: We fillied around for a while with other travelers of the night, playing hogs of the road.

…

Alex: What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolent

…

Frank: Who on Earth could that be?
Wife: I’ll go and see.

…

Dim: What did you do that for?
Alex: For being a bastard with no manners, and not a dook of an idea how to comport yourself public-wise, O my brother.
Dim: I don’t like you should do what you done, and I’m not your brother no more and wouldn’t want to be.
Alex: Watch that. Do watch that, O Dim, if to continue to be on live thou dost wish.
Dim: Yarbles! Great bolshy yarblockos to you. I’ll meet you with chain or nozh or britva anytime, not having you aiming tolchocks at me reasonless. Well, it stands to reason I won’t have it.
Alex: A nozh scrap any time you say.
Dim: Doobidoob. A bit tired, maybe. Best not to say more. Bedways is rightways now, so best we go homeways and get a bit of spatchka. Right, right?
Mum: It’s past eight Alex, you don’t want to be late for school son.
Alex: Bit of a pain in my gulliver, Mum. Leave us be, and I’ll try and sleep it off. And then I’ll be as right as dodgers for this after.
Mum: But you’ve not been at school all week, son.
Alex: Got to rest, Mum. Got to get fit, otherwise I’m liable to miss a lot more school.
Mum: I’ll put your breakfast in the oven. I’ve got to be off myself now.
Alex: Allright, Mum, have a nice day at the factory.

…

P.R. Deltoid: Ah, Alex boy! Awake at last, yes? I met your mother on the way to work, yes? She gave me the key. She said something about a pain somewhere, hence not at school, yes?
Alex: A rather intolerable pain in the head, Brother Sir. I think it should be clear by this after lunch.
P.R. Deltoid: Or certainly by this evening, yes? The evening’s the great time, isn’t it, Alex?

…

P.R. Deltoid:
We studied the problem, we’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes. But we get no farther with all our studies. You’ve got a good home here, good loving parents, you’ve got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?

…

Alex: Naughty, naughty, naughty! You filthy old soomka!

…

Mr. Deltoid: You are now a murderer, little Alex. A murderer.
Alex: Not true, Sir. It was only a slight tolchok, she was breathing, I swear it.
P.R. Deltoid: I’ve just come from the hospital; your victim has died.
Alex: You try to frighten me. Admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture. Say it, Brother Sir.
P.R. Deltoid: It’ll be your own torture. I hope to God it’ll torture you to madness.

…

Alex: I don’t care about the dangers, father. I just want to be good. I want for the rest of my life to be one act of goodness.
Chaplain: Question is, weather or not this technique really makes a man good. Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen, when a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.
Alex: I don’t understand about the whys and wherefores, I only know I want to be good. Chaplain: Be patient, my son. Put your trust in the lord.

…

Governor: I agree, sir. What we need are larger prisons and more money.
Interior Minister: Not a chance, my dear sir. The government can’t be concerned any longer with out-moded penalogical theories. Soon we may be needing all of out prison space for political offenders. Common criminals like these are best dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that’s all. Full implementation in a years time. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment.
Alex: You’re absolutely right, sir!

…

Interior Minister: Excellent, he’s enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, and viscous. He’ll do.

…

Governor [to Alex]: I don’t suppose you know who that was this morning, do you? That was no less a person than the minister of interior. What they call a very new broom. Well these new ridiculous ideas have come at last, and orders are orders. But I may say to you in confidence, I do not approve. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you, you hit back, do you not? Why then, should not the state very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back? Also, the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into good. All of which seems to me to be grossly unjust.

…

Governor: Sign this, where it’s marked.
[Alex turns to the frront page]
Head Guard: DON’T READ IT, SIGN IT!!
Governor: It says that you are willing to have the residue of your sentence commuted to submission to the Ludavico treatment.

…

Alex: What exactly is the treatment here going to be then?
Dr. Brannon: Quite simple really. Were going to show you some films.

…

Alex: So far the first film, was a very good professional piece of cine. Like it was done in Hollywood. The sounds were real horroshow, you could slooshie the screams and moans very realistic. You could even get the heavy breathing and panting of the tolchcoking malchicks at the same time. And then what do you know, soon our dear old friend the red red vino on tap. The same in all places, like it was put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.

…

Dr. Brodsky: Very soon now the drug will cause the subject to experience a deathlike paralysis together with deep feelings of terror and helplessness. One of our earlier test subjects described it as being like death. A sense of stifling and drowning. And it is during this period that we have found the subject will make his most rewarding associations between his catastrophic experience environment and the violence he sees

…

Alex: It was horrible.
Dr. Brannon: Of course it was horrible. Violence is a horrible thing. That’s what you’re learning now, your body’s learning it.
Alex: I just don’t understand about feeling sick the way I did. I never used to feel sick before. I used to feel like the very opposite. I mean doing it or watching it, I used to feel real horrorshow.
Dr. Brannon: You felt ill this afternoon because you’re getting better. You see, when were healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You’re becoming healthy that’s all. By this time tomorrow you’ll be healthier still.

…

Alex: You needn’t take it any further, sir. You’ve proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I’ve learned me lesson, sir. I’ve seen now what I’ve never seen before. I’m cured! Praise god!
Dr. Brodsky: You’re not cured yet, boy.
Alex: But sirs, misses, I see that it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it’s like against society. It’s wrong because everybody has the right to live and be happy without being tolchoked and knifed.
Dr. Brodsky: No, no, boy. You really must leave it to us. Now be cheerful about it. In less than a fortnight now, you’ll be a free man.

…

Interior Minister: Our party promised to restore law and order and to make the streets safe again for the ordinary peace loving citizen. This pledge is now about to become a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, today is an historic moment the problem of criminal violence is soon to be a thing of the past. But enough of words. Actions speak louder than words. Action now, observe all.

…

Interior Minister: You see ladies and gentlemen, our subject is impelled toward the good by paradoxically being impelled toward evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feeling of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.

…

Prison Chaplain: Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.
Interior Minister: Padre, there are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works!!

…

Alex: Hey dad, there’s a strange fella sittin’ on the sofa munchy-wunching lomticks of toast.

…

Alex: All right, I’ve a lot of things out now. I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered. And everybody wants me to go on suffering.
Joe: You’ve made others suffer. It’s only right that you suffer proper. You know, I’ve been told everything you’ve done sitting here at night around the family table, and pretty shocking it was to hear.

…

Frank: The government’s big boast as you know sir is the way they have dealt with crime during the last few months, recruiting brutal young roughs into the police, proposing dehabilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh we’ve seen it all before in other countries, the thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we will have the full apparatus of totalitarianism. This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know, must see. There are rare traditions of liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty is old. The common people will let it grow old, yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life that is why they must be led driven, pushed.

…

Frank: She was very badly raped, you see! We were assaulted by a gang of vicious, young, hoodlums in this house! In this very room you are sitting in now! I was left a helpless cripple, but for her the agony was too great! The doctor said it was pneumonia; because it happened some months later! During a flu epidemic! The doctors told me it was pneumonia, but I knew what it was! A VICTIM OF THE MODERN AGE!

…

Alex: Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep for ever, and ever and ever.

…

Alex: I jumped, O my brothers and I fell hard, but I did not snuff it, if I had snuffed it e would mot be here to tell what I told. I came back to life after a long black black gap of what might have been a million years.

…

Newspaper headlines: GOVERNMENT ACCUSED OF INHUMAN MEANS IN CRIME REFORM…INTERIOR MINISTER IS ACCUSED OF INHUMAN CURE…GOVERNMENT IS MURDERER…STORM OVER “CRIME CURE” BOY…ALEX’S DEATH BID BLAMED ON BRAIN MEN

…

Alex: How many did I get right?
Psychaitrist: It’s not that kind of a test, but you seem well on the way to making a complete recovery!

…

Alex [to Interior Minister]: I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned, sir
[with innocent reinforcement]
Alex: - tortures of the damned.

…

Interiror Minister: I can tell you with all sincerity that I and the government which I am a member, are deeply sorry. We tried to help you. We followed recommendations which were made to us that turned out to be wrong. An inquiry will place the responsibility where it belongs. We want you to regard us as friends. We put you right, you’re getting the best of treatment. We never wished you harm, but there are some who did and do and I think you know who those are. There are certain people who wanted to use you for political ends. They would have be glad to have you dead, for they thought they could then blame it all on the government. There is also a certain man, a writer of subversive literature, who has been howling for your blood. He’s been mad with desire to stick a knife in you, but you’re safe from him now. We put him away. He found out that you had done wrong. He formed this 'em in his head that you had been responsible for the death of someone near and dear to him. He was a menace. We put him away for his own protection, and also for yours.
Alex: Where is he now, sir?
Interior Minister: We put him away where he can do you no harm. You see, we are looking after your interest. We are interested in you and when you leave here you’ll have no worries. We’ll see to everything. A good job on a good salary
Alex: What job, and how much?
Interior Minister: You must have an interesting job, at a salary which you would regard as adequate, not only for the job your going to do and in compensation for what you believe you have suffered. But also because you are helping us. We always help our friends, don’t we? It is no secret that this government has lost a lot of popularity because of you, my boy. There are some that think that in the next election we shall be out. The press has chosen to take a very unfavorable view of what we tried to do, but public opinion has a way of changing and you, Alex - if I may call you, Alex.

…

Alex: I was cured all right![/b]

[iambiguous]

Thank God: Subtitles!!

How can this actually be spoken English? Do I sound to them like they sound to me?

NEDS? It’s really not all that hard to figure out. The rigors of poverty and surviving from day to day in the working class beget the need for, among other things, controlled substances and scapegoats. This begets pain and suffering in the home that is then exported to the schools and the playgrounds and the towns. Around and around it goes. The Wire here, The Wire there. The liberals here, the liberals there. And [of course] the reactionaries.

Boys will be boys.

Being smart among the folks with a, uh, less than average intelligence? If you can’t beat them, join them. But how odd it is…those who push him in that direction.

But, hey, it’s not like that is really his only option. So he tries others.

As for the ending, there may be as many narratives here as there are people. But it is a very, very, very strange one.

IMDb

[b]The film uses “Non-Educated DelinquentS” as a “backronym” for “neds” as it is commonly used in modern day Scotland since the 90s. The English equivalent is chav. Many people including police officials and politicians (including famously Rosie Kane MSP) have discussed the term ned using this definition. As the term ned has been used far longer and dates back to the 19th century according to the OED it is not proven that this is the true origin of the term.

Many of the film’s events parallels Peter Mullan’s own experiences growing up in 1970s Glasgow. Mullan was part of a street gang, and tried to kill his abusive father at 14, both of which the protagonist does in the film.[/b]

NEDS
Written and directed by Peter Mullan

[b]Fergie: Who are you?
John: I’m his wee brother.
Fergie: No you’re no’
John: I am.
Fergie: Benny McGill’s wee brother’s a smart wee cunt. How do you no’ know I’m no’ on my way to go stab the fuck out of him right now? And how do you know I wouldnae take it out on you? See that there? That’s a fucking blade. You know what that’s used for? For gutting daft wee fucking boys like you, you wee cunt.

…

The father: I want you here, cow! I want you down here! Don’t make me come up there! You fat slag. I want you down here now. Right now you fat bitch!

…

Instructor [pulling a strap out of a desk drawer]: In the three years I have been at this school, this has never been used. Now, I am prepared to overlook both your belligerency and your vandalism if I am given first your admission and second an apology.
John: I don’t even know what you said.
Instructor: I find it difficult to believe that in the space of six weeks you have suddenly degenerated into idiocy.
John: So now I’m stupid?
Instructor: I don’t have to take this.
John: So what are you going to do about it?

…

John: Youse want a NED? I’ll Gie youse a fucking NED!

…

Mother: Your brother’s been arrested.
John: What for?
Mother: Does it ever really matter what for?

…

Father [looking up at John]: Who are you? Huh? Elizabeth. Who is this young man?

…

Elizabeth [singing loud with her fingers in her ears]: “Nobody loves me everybody hates me/I think I’ll go and eat worms/Big fat juicy ones, wee, skinny, skooshy ones/See how they wiggle and squirm/You bite off their heads and suck out the juice/And throw their skins away.”
Mother: Elizabeth? Why are you singing?
Elizabeth: John told me to.
Mother: Why did John tell you to sing?[/b]

The film then cuts to why.

[b]Mother [to John]: Get out of this house and don’t come back.

…

Father [to Elizabeth]: Cover your ears.
Father [to John]: Finish me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

How would I even begin to understand this world? I’d be as lost as the folks who choose winners at the Academy awards.

And then there are those black folks of the male persuasion who reacted as angrily to this as they do to the racists themselves. It seems they don’t get women as they ought to. And then even among women there’s the tug of war between inner and outer beauty. There are many things that can cleave us. And then cleave us the other way too.

God is everywhere in this narrative. For all the usual reasons. The most important one being that, at times, what else is there?

And let’s not forget these narratives unfolded decades ago. They didn’t have our own keen eye for the whole truth back then. Just as our descendents will say of us. About some things.

I always react to interactions like this in the same way: Why will some folks do what other folks never even think to do? You all know my own explanation.

IMDb

[b]Steven Spielberg admits that his greatest mistake in directing this film was his lack of courage portraying the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug. At the time of filming, Spielberg feared that overt sexuality between the two characters would alienate audiences, a decision he now regrets.

Caused one of the most controversial moments in the history of the Academy Awards when it received eleven nominations which did not include Steven Spielberg as Best Director. In the end, it won none of them.

At the dinner scene, Oprah Winfrey (Sofia) ad-libbed all her lines when she was talking to Whoopi Goldberg (Celie). After the scene, Whoopi walked over to Oprah, gave her a hug, and told her that she now became an actress.[/b]

wiki

[b]The film was not without criticism, much of it centered on its deviations from the book, especially in terms of the homosexuality depicted. For instance, Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times praised the film for being “distinctive and deeply moving,” as well as the “three memorable performances” of Goldberg, Winfrey, and Avery, but faulted the film for the changes in tone, scale, and underlying themes. Variety found the film overly sentimental, writing, “there are some great scenes and great performances in The Color Purple, but it is not a great film. Steven Spielberg’s turn at ‘serious’ filmmaking is marred in more than one place by overblown production that threatens to drown in its own emotions.”

In addition, some critics alleged that the movie stereotyped black people in general and black men in particular, pointing to the fact that Spielberg, a white man, had directed a predominately African American story.[/b]

THE COLOR PURPLE
Directed by Steven Spielberg

[b]Celie [to Nettie]: You’re gonna have to leave here soon…before he makes his move on you.

…

Nettie [teaching Celie to read]: What’s it say, Celie?
Celie: M-I-S-T-E-R, period.

…

Albert [to Celie, shaving him]: You cut me and I’ll kill you.

…

Celie: She say she write, but she never write. She say only death could keep her from it. Maybe she dead.

…

Harpo: What am I gonna do about Sofia?
Celie: …beat her.

…

Sofia: You told Harpo to beat me?! All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men, but I ain’t never thought I’d have to fight in my own house! I loves Harpo, God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead ‘fo I let him beat me. Now, you want a dead son-in-law Miss Celie, you keep advisin’ him as you do.
Celie: This life be over soon. Heaven last always.
Sofia: Girl, tou ought to bash Misgter’s head open and think about Heaven later.

…

Harpo: Who this, Pa? Who this?
Albert: The woman that shoulda been yo’ mammy.

…

Shug: [to Celie] You sho’ is ugly!

…

Shug [to Albert]: Get that thing to make me something to eat.

…

Old Mr.: Celie, you has my sympathy. Ain’t many women allow they husband’s ho to lay up in they house.

…

Squeak: Harpo! Who dis woman?
Harpo: Now come now, you know who this is.
Squeak: She best’a leave you alone.
Sofia: Fine with me.
Harpo: [to Sofia] You ain’t got to go nowhere. Dis here my jook-joint.
Squeak: [to Harpo] You said dis here our jook-joint!
Harpo: Listen woman can’t a man dance with his wife if he wants to?
Squeak: Not if she left’m!
[to Sofia]
Squeak: And not if he my man! You just a big ol heffa. Ha Ha Ha.
Sofia: [to Squeak] Like I said, fine with me!

…

Celie: [to Shug] He beat me when you ain’t here.
Shug: Who do? Albert?
Celie: Mister.
Shug: Why he do that?
Celie: He beat me for not being you.

…

Celie: He just climb on top of me and do his business.
Shug: “Do his business”? You sound like he going to the toilet on you.
Celie: That’s what it feel like.

…

Miss Millie: Your kids are so clean. You wanna come work for me, be my maid?
Sofia: Hell no.[/b]

And then, just like that, her life changes forever.

Shug [back from the mailbox]: Come on, Miss Celie, come upstairs with me.

And then, just like that, her life changes forever too.

[b]Shug: Where’s Celie?
Kid: Home, fixin’ to shave Mister.

…

Shug: That razor look dull to me, Miss Celie.

…

Celie: [Celie confronting Albert] Nettie and my kids be comin’ home soon, and when they get here we gonna’ set around and whip your ass.

…

Sofia: Sat in that jail, I sat in that jail til I near about done rot to death. I know what it like to wanna go somewhere and cain’t. I know what it like to wanna sing… and have it beat out ‘ya. I want to thank you, Miss Celie, fo everything you done for me. I ‘members that day in the store with Miss Millie - I’s feelin’ real down. I’s feelin’ mighty bad. And when I seed you - I know’d there is a God. I know’d there is a God.

…

Old Mr.: Boy, you goin’ let this ol’ nappy-headed girl cuss you out like that? You sittin’ at the head of your own dinner table and actin’ like the waiter!

…

Celie [lunging towards Albert with a knife]: I curse you. Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble!
Sofia: Don’t do it Mrs. Celie. Don’t trade places with what I been through.
Shug: Come on, Celie, let’s go to the car.
Sofia: He ain’t worth it, he ain’t worth it.
Albert: Who you think you is? You can curse nobody. Look at you. Your black, you’re poor, you’re ugly, you’re a woman, you’re nothing at all!
Celie: Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna fail!

…

Celie: The jail you planned for me is the one you’re gonna rot in.

…

Celie: Nettie!!
Nettie: Celie!!

…

Nettie: This is your son, Adam.
Adam: Mama!
Nettie: And this is your daughter, Olivia!
Olivia: My mama![/b]

[iambiguous]

This is about coincidence and the way in which we mistake what we think we know about something for what actually happens instead. So many lives crushed and crumbled as a result of it.

Nobody lives your life. And lots and lots and lots of people don’t even come close. And then, out of traumatic experiences, epiphanies are born. But not necessarily the ones that others will have. And then, as they follow you to the grave, others will poke and prod at them—at things they really don’t have a fucking clue about.

The urban jungle. Now the suburban jungle. Made in America. See the real thing over and over and over again on the Discovery ID channel.

The flip side of love: loss.

You’ve seen this movie a thousand times. But this particular one is like no other. It’s in how it focuses on the variables intertwined over time that sticks out. We can only understand and control them up to a point. And some [like me] get fixated on this. The crime here is just a means to explore all this in my view. To get inside the heads of those struggling as best they can to make sense of it all. Both the parts that are human all too human and the parts that are uniquely our own.

IMDb

[b]In the beginning of the movie when a young Dave is thrown into the backseat of the car, a man in the front seat turns around and flashes his ring - a bishop’s ring. The book never indicates that the character was a priest, but it was added to the film since the filming was right in the middle of the priest scandal in the Boston Archdiocese.

During the scene where Sean Penn’s character steps into the morgue where his daughter Katie (Emmy Rossum) is lying on the slate dead, and when he is emotionally promising revenge, Rossum burst into tears, saying that “the scene was so powerful and moving and Sean Penn was so amazing”.

For the scene where Jimmy wails and thrashes in anguish at the discovery of Katie’s body, Sean Penn requested that a tank of oxygen be standing by after he finished the take.[/b]

I believe it.

MYSTIC RIVER
Directed by Clint Eastwood

[b]Whitey: Nineteen. Fuck. He’s in for a world of hurt.

…

Jimmy: That’s my daughter’s car.

…

Sean: What the fuck am I gonna tell him? “Hey, Jimmy. God said you owed another marker. He came to collect.”

…

Jimmy: Is my daughter in there? Is she in there? Is she in there?
Sean: Hey! Hey, take it easy! That’s the father.
Jimmy: Is my daughter in there?
[fighting the officers]
Jimmy: Motherfuckers! Is that my daughter in there? Is she in there?
[Sean gives a small nod]
Jimmy: Sean! Is that my daughter in there? Is that my daughter in there? No! No! No! No, aagggh, no! No! Oh, God! Oh, God! No!

…

Jimmy: You ever think how one choice can change your life? I heard Hitler’s mother almost aborted him but bailed at the last minute. You know?
Sean: What do you mean, Jimmy?
Jimmy: Say you or me got in that car instead of Dave Boyle.
Whitey: What car?
Sean: I’m losing you here, Jimmy.
Jimmy: If I’d got in that car, life would be a different thing. My first wife, Marita, Katie’s mother? She was beautiful. Regal. You know the way some Latin women can be? And she knew it. You had to have balls to even go near her. And I did. Eighteen years old, the two of us, and she was carrying Katie. Here’s the thing, Sean, if I had gotten in that car, I most likely would’ve ended up a basket case. I never would have had the juice to ask out Marita and Katie would have never been born. And Katie, then, would never have been murdered.[/b]

There are two kinds of people in this world: People who think about things like this the way I do and people who don’t.

[b]Whitey: The moment I laid eyes on him, I could tell he’d done time. They never lose it, you know. That tension, it settles up around their shoulders.
Sean: He just lost his daughter, maybe that’s what’s settled in his shoulders.
Whitey: No, that’s in his stomach. The tension in his shoulders, that’s prison.

…

Jimmy: They put her in a bag.
Theo: What’s that?
Jimmy: That’s what Katie looked like when I saw her in the morgue. Like they put her in a bag and then they beat the bag with pipes. Janie died in her sleep, all due respect, but there you go. She went to sleep, she never woke up. Peaceful.
Theo: You don’t need to talk about Janie.
Jimmy: My daughter was murdered. They put a gun to her. As we stand here, she’s on an autopsy slab getting cut open by scalpels and chest spreaders, and you’re talking to me about domestic fucking responsibility? Good to see you, Theo.

…

Jimmy: And it’s really starting to piss me off, Dave, because I can’t cry for her! She’s my own little daughter, and I can’t even cry for her!
Dave: Jimmy…you’re crying now.

…

Brendan: I loved her so much. I’m never gonna feel that again. It doesn’t happen twice.
Sean: Doesn’t happen once most times.

…

Sean [on the phone with Lauren]: Okay. “Hey Sean, how was your day?” Oh me? I’m tired of wishing things made sense. I’m tired of caring about some dead girl, and there’s just gonna be another one after her. Sending killers to jail is just sending them where they’ve been heading all their dumb, pathetic lives. The dead are still dead.

…

Dave: I just need to get my head right. Catch a nice long sleep and the boy will go back to his forest. Back to his fireflies.

…

Jimmy [thinking out loud about Katie]: I know in my soul I contributed to your death. But I don’t know how.

…

Dave: I’m talking Henry and George. They took me for a four-day ride. And they buried me in this ratty old cellar with a sleeping bag, and, man, Celeste, did they have their fun. And no one came to help old Dave then. Dave had to pretend to be someone else.
Celeste: You mean all those years ago? When you were a boy?(touches him)Dave…
Dave [jerking away from her touch]: Dave’s dead. I don’t know who came out of that cellar, but it sure as shit wasn’t Dave!
(calms)
You see, honey, the thing is, it’s like vampires, once it’s in you, it stays.
Celeste: What stays?
Dave: Did you know there were child prostitutes in Rome Basin?
Celeste: What?
Dave: Fuck. I can’t trust my mind anymore, Celeste. I’m warning you. I can’t trust my mind.

…

Dave [in interrogation room]: You think I could get that Sprite, Sean?
Sean: Sure.
[As Sean reaches for the door, Dave smiles]
Dave: Oh, I get it. You’re the good cop. How about a meatball sub while you’re at it?

…

Jimmy: You do death alone, but I coulda helped her with the dyin’ part.

…

Dave; You think I killed Katie, don’t you?
Jimmy: Don’t talk, Dave.
Dave: No, no, no. I killed someone, but it wasn’t Katie.
Jimmy: Is this the mugger story?
Dave: He wasn’t a mugger. He, he was a child molester. He was having sex with this kid in his car.

…

Jimmy: One more time…about the boy, and I will cut you the fuck open! Admit what you did and I’ll let you live.

…

Dave: That night in McGills she reminded me of a dream I had.
Jimmy: What dream?
Dave: A dream of youth. I don’t remember having one. You’d know what I mean if you had gotten into that car instead of me.

…

Jimmy: Like I said Dave, this part you do alone.

…

Sean: We got 'em Jimmy.
Jimmy: Got who?
Sean: Katie’s killers. We got 'em cold.[/b]

Uh-oh.

[b]Sean: So, Jimmy, when was the last time you saw Dave?

…

Sean: Jimmy, what did you do?
[Jimmy rubs Sean Devine on the shoulder]
Jimmy: Thanks for finding my daughter’s killer, Sean. If only you’d been a little faster.
Sean: Are you gonna send Celeste Boyle 500 a month too?

…

Annabeth: Their daddy’s a king. And a king knows what to do and does it. Even when it’s hard. And their daddy will do whatever he has to for those he loves. And that’s all that matters. Because everyone is weak, Jimmy. Everyone but us. We will never be weak. And you, you could rule this town. And after Jimmy, let’s take the girls down to the parade. Katie would like that.[/b]

See what I mean about rationalizations? You do what you have to do in order to stay afloat [more pr less] on your own terms.

[iambiguous]

Duplicate post.

[iambiguous]

One thing for sure: Quentin loves being one of the few white dudes able to splash the N word all over the screen. Even gratuitously if need be.

I liked this movie. In parts, a lot. But I don’t think I will ever quite get what the fuss is all about. Over at IMDB it got a 9 rating. That is phenomenally rare. Where are the insights here? What accounts for all the lavish praise? What am I missing?

Or maybe it is a “technical” thing: “The picture’s self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and pastiche have led critics to describe it as a prime example of postmodern film.” — wiki

A “cultural watershed” too…like the Beatles or Bob Dylan?

They are all just fucking thugs. Even if one of them does find, uh, God. In the end, it all sounds like religious bullshit to me. Does anyone really imagine Jules buying into it and traipsing off into the sunset like Caine? Go figure.

Some cinematic “bad guys” are interesting. You can imagine sitting down with them and exchanging insights into the human condition. But nobody here sparks me in that way. They can wry and witty, clever and cute, hip and haughty bantering back and forth. But does it really run any deeper than that? Nope, not for me.

IMDb

[b]The passage from the Bible that Jules has memorized was mostly made up by Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson. The only part that’s similar to what the Bible says is the part where he says, “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.” However, the parts about the righteous man and the shepherd are not real.

Courtney Love claimed that Quentin Tarantino originally wanted Kurt Cobain and her to play Lance and Jody. However, Tarantino denies ever having even met Kurt, much less offered him a part.

Travolta asked Tarantino’s friend to tell him how could he know what it felt like to be on heroin (without actually using it of course). Tarantino’s friend explained “If you want to get the ‘bottom envelope’ feeling of that, get plastered on Tequila, and lie down in a hot pool. Then you will have barely touched the feeling of what it might be like to be on heroin.”[/b]

Count the McGuffins.

PULP FICTION
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

[b]Honey Bunny: [about to rob a diner] I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: I love you, Honey Bunny.
Pumpkin: [Standing up with a gun] All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery!
Honey Bunny: Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!

…

Jules: So, tell me again about the hashbars?
Vincent: Okay, what you wanna know?
Jules: Hash is legal there in Amsterdam, right?
Vincent: Yeah, it’s legal, but it ain’t a hundred percent legal. I mean, you can’t just walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffing away. You’re only supposed to smoke in your home or certain designated places.
Jules: And those are hashbars?
Vincent: Yeah. It breaks down like this: it’s legal to buy it, it’s legal to own it, and, if you’re the proprietor of a hash bar, it’s legal to sell it. It’s still illegal to carry it around, but that doesn’t really matter ‘cause… get a load of this: if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it’s illegal for them to search you. I mean, that’s a right the cops in Amsterdam don’t have.
Jules: [laughing] I’m going, that’s all there is to it, I’m fuckin’ going.
Vincent: Yeah baby, you’d dig it the most.

…

Jules: Look, just because I don’t be givin’ no man a foot massage don’t make it right for Marsellus to throw Antwone into a glass motherfuckin’ house, fuckin’ up the way the nigger talks. Motherfucker do that shit to me, he better paralyze my ass, ‘cause I’ll kill the motherfucker, know what I’m sayin’?
Vincent: I ain’t saying it’s right. But you’re saying a foot massage don’t mean nothing, and I’m saying it does. Now look, I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages, and they all meant something. We act like they don’t, but they do, and that’s what’s so fucking cool about them. There’s a sensuous thing going on where you don’t talk about it, but you know it, she knows it, fucking Marsellus knew it, and Antwone should have fucking better known better. I mean, that’s his fucking wife, man. He can’t be expected to have a sense of humor about that shit. You know what I’m saying?
Jules: That’s an interesting point. Come on, let’s get into character.

…

Vincent: Have you ever given a foot massage?
Jules: [scoffs] Don’t be tellin’ me about foot massages. I’m the foot fuckin’ master.
Vincent: Given a lot of ‘em?
Jules: Shit yeah. I got my technique down and everything, I don’t be ticklin’ or nothin’.
Vincent: Would you give a guy a foot massage?
[Jules gives Vincent a long look, realizing he’s been set up]
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You give them a lot?
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You know, I’m getting kinda tired. I could use a foot massage myself.
Jules: Man, you best back off, I’m gittin’ a little pissed here.

…

Marsellus [to Butch]: The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps…In the fifth your ass goes down.

…

Jody: Lance! The goddamn phone’s ringing!
Lance: [getting up to answer the phone] I can hear it.
Jody: I thought you told those fucking assholes never to call here this late!
Lance: Yeah, I told them. And that is exactly what I’m going to tell this fucking asshole, right now.

…

Lance: [answering the phone] Hello.
Vincent: Lance! It’s Vincent. I’m in big fuckin’ trouble, man. I’m coming to your house.
Lance: Whoa. Whoa. Hold your horses, man. What’s the problem?
Vincent: I’ve got this chick, she fuckin’ O.D.in’ on me!
Lance: Well, don’t bring her here! I’m not even fuckin’ joking with you, man! Do not be bringing some fucked-up pooh-bah to my house!
Vincent: No choice.
Lance: She’s O.D.in’?
Vincent: She’s fuckin’ dyin’ on me, man!
Lance: Okay, then you bite the fuckin’ bullet, take her to a hospital and call a lawyer.
Vincent: Negative.
Lance: This is not my fuckin’ problem, man! You fucked her up, you fuckin’ deal with this!

…

Jody: [seeing Mia on the floor] Who’s she?
Lance: Look, go to the fridge and get the thing with the O.D. adrenalin shot.
Jody: What’s wrong with her?
Vincent: She’s O.D.ing!
Jody: Get her the hell outta her!
Lance, Vincent: GET THE SHOT!!!

…

Vincent: I-I gotta stab her three times?
Lance: No, you don’t gotta fucking stab her three times! You gotta stab her once, but it’s gotta be hard enough to break through her breastplate into her heart, and then once you do that, you press down on the plunger.
Vincent: What happens after that?
Lance: I’m kinda curious about that myself…

…

Vincent: If you’ll excuse me, I gotta go home and have a heart attack.

…

Mia: You still wanna hear my “FOX FORCE FIVE” joke?
Vincent: Sure, but I think I’m still a little too petrified to laugh.
Mia: Uh-huh. You won’t laugh because it’s not funny. But if you still wanna hear it, I’ll tell it. Vincent: I can’t wait.
Mia: Three tomatoes are walking down the street, a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. The baby tomato is lagging behind the poppa and momma tomato. The poppa tomato gets mad, goes over to the momma tomato and stamps on him and says: catch up. Ketchup.

…

Captain Koons: The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

…

Butch: [beating up Marsellus] You feel that sting, big boy, huh? That’s pride FUCKIN’ with you! You gotta fight through that shit!

…

Maynard: Nobody kills anyone in my store except me and Zed.
[doorbell rings]
Maynard: That’s Zed.

…

Zed: Bring out The Gimp.

…

Butch: You okay?
Marsellus: Naw man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from okay.
Butch: What now?
Marsellus: What now? Let me tell you what now. I’ma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin’ niggers, who’ll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin’, hillbilly boy? I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’ma get medieval on your ass.
Butch: I meant what now between me and you?
Marsellus: Oh, that what now. I tell you what now between me and you. There is no me and you. Not no more.
Butch: So we cool?
Marsellus: Yeah, we cool. Two things. Don’t tell nobody about this. This shit is between me, you, and Mr. Soon-To-Be-Living-The-Rest-of-His-Short-Ass-Life-In-Agonizing-Pain Rapist here. It ain’t nobody else’s business. Two: you leave town tonight, right now. And when you’re gone, you stay gone, or you be gone. You lost all your L.A. privileges. Deal?
Butch: Deal.
Marsellus: Get your ass out of here.

…

Jules: You know, cops tend to notice shit like your driving a car drenched in fucking blood.

…

Jimmie: You know what’s on my mind right now? It ain’t the coffee in my kitchen, it’s the dead nigger in my garage.
Jules: Oh, Jimmie, don’t even worry about it.
Jimmie: Let me ask you a question. When you came pulling in here, did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said “Dead Nigger Storage”?
Jules: Jimmie, you know I ain’t seen no…
Jimmie: [cutting him off, getting angry] Did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said “Dead Nigger Storage”?
Jules: [pause] No. I didn’t.
Jimmie: You know WHY you didn’t see that sign?
Jules: Why?
Jimmie: 'Cause it ain’t there, 'cause storing dead niggers ain’t my fucking business, that’s why!

…

Jules: Oh, man, I will never forgive your ass for this shit. This is some fucked-up repugnant shit.
Vincent: Jules, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings? Have you ever heard that?
Jules: Get the fuck out my face with that shit! The motherfucker that said that shit never had to pick up itty-bitty pieces of skull on account of your dumb ass.
Vincent: I got a threshold, Jules. I got a threshold for the abuse that I will take. Now, right now, I’m a fuckin’ race car, right, and you got me the red. And I’m just sayin’, I’m just sayin’ that it’s fuckin’ dangerous to have a race car in the fuckin’ red. That’s all. I could blow.
Jules: Oh! Oh! You ready to blow?
Vincent: Yeah, I’m ready to blow.
Jules: Well, I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch brain, I’m Superfly T.N.T., I’m the Guns of the Navarone! IN FACT, WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOIN’ IN THE BACK? YOU’RE THE MOTHERFUCKER WHO SHOULD BE ON BRAIN DETAIL!

…

Jules: If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

…

Vincent: Jules, if you give that fuckin’ nimrod fifteen hundred dollars, I’m gonna shoot him on general principles.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Sex again. Only this time it’s an addiction. And the addict is Michael Fassbender. Hey, time to reconfigure all the past calculations. He just walks down the street and beautiful women stop to give him a ride. Then a cut to them going at it under some bridge.

Next thing you know he is handing a towel to his naked sister [Carey Mulligan] in the bathroom.

Think, say, more civilized [but no less fucked up] American psychos. Everybody’s got a past. Some are just more saturated in sex than others.

How much do you figure “the culture” plays into all that? The part where sex sells.

Hmm…

What exactly would you be ashamed of? What would you have put into Brandon’s trash bag?

And some of us are beyond the point where trying to figure out what went wrong seems reasonable. There are so many things it could have been. And there are so many ways that knowing this wouldn’t make any difference.

IMDb

[b]The scene where Brandon hears his sister sing in the restaurant was shot in real time. James Badge Dale and Michael Fassbender had never heard Carey Mulligan sing before so their reactions were real. The scene was shot at 3 a.m with cameras focused on all 3 performers at the same time.

The sex scene with Michael Fassbender and Amy Hargreaves pressed against the glass of a room window in Manhattan’s The Standard hotel was actually filmed above a busy street during the day. Spectators watched while the two actors, in the nude, smiled and waved at them from the hotel room above between takes. Since the Standard Hotel opened in New York in 2009, it has become notorious for its guests engaging in public sexual activity in front of their rooms’ windows, sometimes for the entertainment of audiences on the street or in the High Line park below the building. This phenomenon has been documented in articles in New York Magazine, The New York Post, and The Observer, among other publications.[/b]

wiki

[b]The film was rated NC-17 (no children 17 or under admitted) by the Motion Picture Association of America. Fox Searchlight has not planned to appeal the rating or make cuts for the less-restrictive R rating. Searchlight president Steve Gilula said, “I think NC-17 is a badge of honor, not a scarlet letter. We believe it is time for the rating to become usable in a serious manner”.

Grossing $17 million by the end of its theatrical run, Shame became the second-highest grossing NC-17 rated film of all time, behind only Showgirls, which grossed $20 million in 1995.[/b]

SHAME
Written and directed by Steve McQueen

[b]David: Now some kid snorts the entire load of his mother’s spice cupboard. Post that on YouTube. They would watch as it becomes the buzz word amongst high school students everywhere. Eventually, this cynicism is turning into awe.

…

Steven: Don’t tell me. No cabs.
Brandon: No, your wife wouldn’t let me leave this morning.

…

Brandon: Sissy, get out of my room.
Sissy: It’s cold.
Brandon: Sissy, get out of my room. Get out of my room…GET THE FUCK OUT! GET OUT!!

…

David: One more thing. Your hard drive is filthy, all right? We got your computer back. I mean, it is dirty. I’m talking like hos, sluts, anal, double anal, penetration, interracial facial, man…You think it was your intern?[/b]

Two kinds of people…

[b]Brandon: If you had a choice to live in the past or the future and you could be anything you wanted to be, what would you be?
Marianne: What would you be?
Brandon: Well, I always wanted to be a musician in the '60s.
Marianne: '60s is tough though. I saw Gimmie Shelter recently, you know the Rolling Stones documentary? It kind of seemed like hell.
Brandon: What?!
Marianne: Yeah, the '60s would be, like, the last place I would want to be.
Brandon: No way!
Marianne: Yes. Ugh. Chaos!
Brandon: So where and what would you wanna be?
Marianne: You know, here, now.
Brandon: That’s boring.
Marianne [half-jokingly]: Fuck you.

…

Brandon: He’s not going to screw you again. You left him a message, didn’t you? You can’t help yourself. It’s disgusting.
Sissy: Why are you so fucking angry?
Brandon: Why am I so fucking angry? That’s my boss. You sleep with him after twenty minutes. Now you’re calling him up. What’s the matter with you?

…

Brandon: But some people fuck up all the time.

…

Sissy: You’re my brother.
Brandon: So what? I’m responsible for you?
Sissy: Yes.
Brandon: No, I’m not.
Sissy: Yes, you fucking are.
Brandon: No, I didn’t give birth to you. I didn’t bring you into this world.
Sissy: You’re my brother, I’m your sister. We’re family. We’re meant to look after each other.
Brandon: You’re not looking after me. I’m looking after myself.
Sissy: I’m trying, I’m trying to help you.
Brandon: How are you helping me, huh? How are you helping me? How are you helping me? Huh? Look at me. You come in here and you’re a weight on me. Do you understand me? You’re a burden. You’re just dragging me down. How are you helping me? You can’t even clean up after yourself. Stop playing the victim.
Sissy: I’m not playing the victim. If I left, I would never hear from you again. Don’t you think that’s sad? Don’t you think that’s sad? You’re my brother.[/b]

Hank Reardon went through much the same thing in Atlas Shrugged. And you know what he learned, right?

Sissy [over the phone]: Brandon, I need you. We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.

[iambiguous]

Withnail is back! Sort of.

A truly blistering take on the whole fucking Madison Avenue monstrosity. But this goes where Mad Men can never go. Why? Here, follow the bouncing logic:

1] Mad Men airs on AMC.
2] AMC is a part of commercial television.
3] Commercial televison exist in order to sell advertising.
Ergo
4] How far will the advertisers allow the narrative to go in belittling what they do?

It’s like nightly newscasts brought to you by every imaginable Fortune 500 company out there. How deep down will they go in probing the reality of capitalism? They don’t call it “the corporate media” for nothing.

That this filmed grossed only $418,000 in the USA is nothing short of obscene.

On the other hand, it puts the onus here on “greed”. As though advertising were a psychosis rather than an organic component of the relationships folks like Marx speculated about.

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING
Written and directed by Bruce Robinson

[b]Dennis: Let me try and clarify some of this for you. Best Company Supermarkets are not interested in selling wholesome foods. They are not worried about the nation’s health. What is concerning them, is that the nation appears to be getting worried about its health, and that is what’s worrying Best Co., because Best Co. wants to go on selling them what it always has, i.e. white breads, baked beans, canned foods, and that suppurating, fat squirting little heart attack traditionally known as the British sausage. So, how can we help them with that? Clearly, we are looking for a label. We need a label brimming with health, and everything from a nosh pot to a white sliced will wear one with pride. And although I’m aware of the difficulties of coming to terms with this, it must be appreciated from the beginning, that even the nosh pot must be low in something, and if it isn’t, it must be high in something else, and that is its health-giving ingredient we will sell. Which brings me to my final question: who are we trying to sell this to? Answer: we are trying to sell this to the archetypal average housewife, she who fills her basket. What you have here is a 22 year old pretty girl. What you need is taut slob, something on foot deodorisers in a brassiere.
Larry: I, uh, I’m not quite sure we can go along with that, Mr. Bagley. I mean, if you look at, like, the market research…
Dennis: I don’t need to look at the market research. I’ve lived with 13 and a half million housewives for 15 years and I know everything about them. She’s 37 years old, she has 2.3 children, 1.6 of which will be girls, she uses 16 feet 6 inches of toilet tissue a week and fucks no more than 4.2 times a month. She has 7 radiators and is worried about her weight, which is why we have her on a diet, and because we have her on a diet we also encourage her to reward herself with the little treats. And she deserves them, because anyone existing on 1200 calories of artificial synthetic orange-flavoured waffle a day deserves a little treat. We know it’s naughty but you do deserve it, go on, darling, swallow a bun! And she does, and the instant she does, the guilt cuts in. So here we are again with our diet. It’s a vicious, but quite wonderful circle, and it adheres to only one rule: whatever it is, sell it. And if you want to stay in advertising, by God, you’d better learn that!

…

Dennis: Anything else, I’m fine. Give me any other part of the human body and I’ll sell it something. Give me a bald head and I’ll sell it shampoo. But I cannot get a handle on the boils. The moment I think of a boil, my mind slips into a sort of dreadful oily neutral. I just sit there hour after hour chewing the ends off pencils, smoking myself daft.
Julia: What exactly is this stuff?
Dennis: It’s a standard 16-20 year old acne attacker. It’s a hexifluoride.
Julia: Does it work?
Dennis: No idea. It’s probably junk.
Julia: Well that’s probably the problem. If you knew it worked and actually got rid of boils you’d probably have no problem selling it.
Dennis: Nobody in advertising wants to get rid of boils, Julia. They’re good little money-spinners. All we wanna do is offer hope of getting rid them, and that’s where I’m blocked.

…

Dennis [in a crowded restaurant]: I did not have a problem with piles!

…

Businessman on Train: [reading a newspaper] I see the police have made another lightning raid. Paddington drug orgy.
Priest on Train: [Irish accent] I suppose young girls was involved?
Businessman: One discovered naked in a kitchen. Breasts smeared with peanut butter. “The police took away a bag containing 15 grams of cannibis resin. It may also have contained a quantity of heroin.”
Dennis: Or a pork pie.
Businessman: I beg your pardon?
Dennis: I said the bag may also have contained a pork pie.
Businessman: I hardly see how a pork pie’s got anything to do with it.
Dennis: All right then, what about a large turnip? It may also have contained a big turnip.
Priest: The bag was full of drugs.
Dennis: Nonsense.
Priest: The bag was full of drugs, it says so!
Dennis: The bag could have been full of anything. Pork pies, turnips, oven parts. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
Priest: What book?
Dennis: The distortion of truth by association book. The word is “may”. You all believe heroin was in the bag because cannibis resin was in the bag. The bag may have contained heroin, but the chances are 100 to 1 certain that it didn’t.
Businessman: A lot more likely than what you say.
Dennis: About as likely as a tit spread with peanut butter.
Businessman: Do you mind?
Priest: The tit was spread with peanut butter!
Dennis: Nonsense.
Priest: It says so! Who’s the man you are to think you know more about it than the press?
Dennis: I’m an expert on tits. Tits and peanut butter. I’m also an expert drug pusher. I’ve been pushing drugs for 20 years. And I can tell you a pusher protects his pitch! We wanna sell them cigarettes and don’t like competition, see? So we associate a relatively innocuous drug with one that is extremely dangerous, and the rags go along with it because they adore the dough from the ads!
Businessman: I’ve had enough of this. I’m getting off at Datchet.
Dennis: [getting even more animated] Getting off at Datchet won’t help you! Getting off anywhere won’t help you! I’ve had an octopus squatting on my brain for a fortnight, and I suddenly see that I am the only one that can help you! It would be pointless to go into the reasons why, but I’ve been worried sick about boils for a fortnight! Large boils, small boils, fast eruptors, they’re incurable, all of them!
[the other 3 men leave the compartment and head to the door, Bagley follows them]
Dennis: I know that and so does everybody else, until they get one! Then the rules suddenly change. With a boil on the nose, there’s sudden overnight surge in fate, they wanna believe something will work!
[points to the priest]
Dennis: He knows that, which is why he gets a good look-in with the dying.
[they step off the train and shut the door. Bagley sticks his head out of the window]
Dennis: Sells them hope, see? But these boys would be full time into real estate if anyone came up with a genuine cure for death!
Priest: Good God, this is a madman!
Dennis: What do you know about God, you wire-haired mick?

…

Dennis: By God you’re right. I’ve got a boil!

…

John: Don’t you think the way you reacted could be considered a little irrational?
Dennis: Don’t start the old irrational bollocks with me, Bristol, I’m up to here with it! I know everything there is to know about rationality, and I know everything there is to know about advertising. So don’t tell me I’m being irrational, cos I’m the man who’s taken the stench out of everything but shit!

…

Dennis: This morning it was a pea. Now it’s the size of a fucking tomato!

…

Dennis: The boil! IT’S ALIVE!!

…

Doctor: Running naked round a garden insisting a boil has spoken to you is more than just exhaustion, Julia.

…

Psychiatrist: Tell me about advertising. Now, you resigned from a very important firm with a very highly-paid job. I’d like to know your reasons.
[Bagley doesn’t answer]
Psychiatrist: Well, at least try and give me an example of even one of those reasons.
Dennis: All right. Reason 1: advertising conspires with Big Brother.
Psychiatrist: And you’re afraid of Big Brother? Someone or something coming into your life and telling you what to do?
Dennis: No, I’m not afraid of him. I’m one of the few who really understands him. The man who conceived of Big Brother never knew what was coming down the line. Thought his filthy creation was gonna be watching us. But it is us who watch it. There’s one in every living room. The montrous injustice of it is we stare at it of our own free will.
Psychiatrist: So we could say principally that it’s television that you blame.
Dennis: We can say entirely it is crux who’ve infiltrated it that I blame. They’ve moved in on the greatest means of communication since the wheel, and now they’ve done it their greed is insatiable. They’re cutting down jungles to breed hamburgers, turning the whole world into a car park! They’d sell off the sea to satisfy the needs of their great god Greed! But it won’t be satisfied, not til we’re squatting in one of it’s fucking hatchbacks on a motorway. But there isn’t gonna be anywhere left to go, except in slow revolutions towards the crest of the next slag heap.[/b]

And now even the Sundance Channel has the fucking things! It will soon go the way of IFC.

[b]Dennis: My grandfather was caught molesting a wallaby in a private zoo in 1919.
Psychiatrist: A wallaby?
Dennis: It may have been a kangaroo. I’m not sure.
Psychiatrist: You mean sexually?
Dennis: I suppose so. He had his hand in its pouch
Voice of the boil: Fucked it, didn’t he?
Dennis: He did not fuck it!

…

Dennis: You bastard. I only have one wish, that I could be awake to see you lanced. I’d like to see the knife going in. I’d like to see you suffer!
Voice of the Boil: A typically communist statement.
Dennis: I’m not a communist!
Voice of the Boil: Yes, you are, you want to take everyone’s car away.
Dennis: I do not want to take anything from anyone. I want to give them the choice of something better.
Voice of the Boil: Oh yes? What?
Dennis: Trains.
Voice of the Boil: Trains? Trains are no good, they’re old fashioned. I hate trains, they’re rotten.
Dennis: Only because they don’t consume. Only because they were already there and don’t eat up more and more and more. That’s why you hate them. That’s why government hates them. That’s why they’re old fashioned and rotten.
Voice of the Boil: You Commies don’t half talk a lot of shit.

…

Penny: Sex. Apparently, he’s insatiable. Dick dick dick. I shouldn’t really be telling you this. It was said to me in the strictest confidence and that’s exactly how I’m telling you.

…

Dennis: Shall I tell you why people buy hydrogen bombs? Because they’re not like the bombs people used to use in wars. We put an added ingredients into bombs these days. It’s called peace. Our warheads are stuffed to the brim with it.

…

Julia: You still want to sell them boils!
Dennis: Nothing crazy about that. It’s a free market, people will either buy or they won’t buy. Nobody’s forcing them. Everyone knows what they’re getting.
Julia: Perhaps they don’t.
Dennis: Of course they do. People might be a bit greedy from time to time but we’re not blind. We’ve got our eyes open, and we have a choice.
Julia: Perhaps.
Dennis: Stop saying perhaps! What’s perhaps got to do with it?
Julia: Perhaps they don’t.
Dennis: Perhaps if they’d hanged Jesus Christ we’d all be kneeling in front of a fucking gibbet! That’s not the real world. In thereal world I have a choice. Do I want it, or don’t I.

…

Dennis: We’re living in a shop. The world is one magnificent fucking shop. And if it hasn’t got a price tag, it isn’t worth having. There is no greater freedom than freedom of choice, and that’s the difference between you and me, boil. I was brought up to believe in that, and so should you, but you don’t. You don’t want freedom, do you? You don’t even want roads. God, I never want to go on another train as long as I live! Roads represent a fundamental right of man to have access to the good things in life. Without roads, established family favorites would become elitist delicacies. Potter’s soap would be for the few. There’d be no more tea bags, no instant potatoes, no long life cream. There’d be no aerosols. Detergents would vanish. So would tinned spaghetti and baked beans with six frankfurters. The right to smoke one’s chosen brand would be denied. Chewing gum would probably disappear, so would pork pies. Foot deodorizers would climax without hope of replacement. When the hydrolyzed monosodium glutamate reserves run out, food would rot in its packets. Jesus Christ, there wouldn’t be any more packets! Packaging would vanish from the face of the Earth. But worst of all, there’d be no more cars. And more than anything, people love their cars. They have a right to them. They have to sweat all day in some stinking factory making disposable cigarette lighters or everlasting Christmas trees, by Christ, they’re entitled to them! They’re entitled to any innovation technology brings. Whether it’s ten percent more of it or fifteen percent off of it, they’re entitled to it! They’re entitled to one of four important new ingredients! Why should anyone have to clean their teeth without important new ingredients? Why the hell shouldn’t they have their CZT? How dare some smutty Marxist carbunkle presume to deny them it? They love their CZT! They want it, they need it, they positively adore it! And by Christ, while I’ve got air in my body they’re going to get it! They’re going to get it bigger and brighter and better. I’ll put CZT in their margarine if necessary, shove vitamins in their toilet rolls. If happiness means the whole world standing on a double layer of foot deodorizers, I, Bagley, will see that they get them! I’ll give them anything and everything they want! By God, I will! I shall not cease, till Jerusalem is builded here, on England’s green and pleasant land![/b]

[iambiguous]

Academia.

There was a time I thought I’d be one of them. Like most of us, I suppose.

Man, did I ever want to be a writer. A “junkie for the printed word”. We get over things.

A menagerie of intelligent and interesting liberals interacting engagingly in an intelligent and interesting script.

Like the rest of us, they find themselves becoming entangled in all manner of predicaments. Some they bring on themselves and others they more or less stumble into. Then the fun begins. Right up to the point it isn’t fun at all. But the ending is pure Hollywood.

There’s the scene where Grady tells Sara the gun fires caps, not bullets. She puts the gun to his heart. She says “Pow”. That was a whole other movie in itself, eh?

It goes without saying that James is my favorite. The James he makes up, anyway.

Why did the film [critically praised] flop at the box office?

wiki

In an interview with Amy Taubin, Hanson said, “The very things that made Michael and I want to do the movie so badly were the reasons it was so tricky to market. Since films go out on so many screens at once, there’s a need for instant appeal. But Wonder Boys isn’t easily reducible to a single image or a catchy ad line”. Hanson felt that the studio played it safe with the original ad campaign. They also released it a week after the Academy Award nominations were announced and the studio spent more money promoting the films of theirs that were nominated and not enough on Wonder Boys. The studio pulled the film out of theaters and quickly canceled the video release.

Fucking Hollywood.

WONDER BOYS
Directed by Curtis Hanson

[b]Antonia: Terry was telling me about you on the plane. It was all so interesting.
Terry: I was just explaining how a book comes to be published…what you do as a writer, what I do as an editor.
Grady: I sweat blood for five years, and he corrects my spelling.
Antonia: That’s exactly what he said.

…

Grady: She’s a transvestite.
Terry: You’re stoned.
Grady: She’s still a transvestite.

…

Terry: I thought you were Mrs. Gaskell’s hobby.
Grady: Piss off, will you, Crabs? I lost a wife today.
Terry: You’ll find another. She’ll be young, beautiful. They always are.

…

Sara: You first.
Grady: This morning…
Sara: I’m pregnant.

…

James: It’s just… for good luck. Some people carry rabbits’ feet…
Grady: …You carry firearms.

…

Hannah: James will know about George Sanders.
James: George Sanders?
Hannah: Mr. Crabtree was saying how George Sanders killed himself, only he couldn’t remember how.
James: Pills. April 25, 1972, in a Costa Brava hotel room.
Terry: How comprehensive of you.
Hannah: James is amazing. He knows all the movie suicides. Go ahead, James. Tell him.
James: There are so many.
Hannah: Well, just a few. The big ones.
James: Pier Angeli, 1971 or '72, also pills. Donald “Red” Barry, shot himself in 1980. Charles Boyer, 1978, pills again. Charles Butterworth, 1946, I think. In a car. Supposedly, it was an accident, but, you know, he was distraught. Dorothy Dandridge, pills, 1965. Albert Dekker, 1968. He hung himself. He wrote his suicide note in lipstick on his stomach. William Inge, carbon monoxide, 1973. Carole Landis, pills again. I forget when. George Reeves, “Superman” on TV, shot himself. Jean Seberg, pills, of course, 1979. Everett Sloane - he was good - pills. Margaret Sullavan, pills. Lupe Velez, a lot of pills. Gig Young, he shot himself and his wife in 1978. There are tons more.
Hannah: I haven’t heard of half of them.
Terry: You did them alphabetically.
James: It’s just how my brain works, I guess.

…

James: Professor Tripp? Can I ask you a question?
Grady: Yeah, James.
James: What are we going to do with… it?
Grady: I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out how to tell the Chancellor I murdered her husband’s dog.
James: You?
Grady: Trust me, James, when the family pet’s been assassinated, the owner doesn’t want to hear one of her students was the trigger man.
James: Does she want to hear it was one of her professors?
Grady: …I’ve got tenure.

…

Antonia [now Tony]: He said he’s sure your book’s so good that he’ll be able to keep his job. Thar you’re not one of those writers who has a success and then freezes up and never has another one.

…

Grady: All right. Let him crash at my house.
Hannah: Where should I put him?
Grady: In the shape that he’s in, you could stand him up in the garage next to the snow shovels and he’d be all right.

…

Grady: [Narrating] So there it was. Somewhere in the night, a Manhattan book editor was prowling the streets of Pittsburgh; best-selling author at his side, dead dog in his trunk.

…

Traxler: Say, Professor Tripp, is all that stuff true about Errol Flynn? How he used to put paprika… on his dick… to make it, you know, like… more stimulating… for the chick?
Grady: Christ, Traxler, how the hell should I know?
Traxler: [gesturing to James Leer’s rucksack that Tripp is holding] You’re reading his biography, aren’t you?
Grady: Oh. No, it’s true. He used to rub all sorts of things on it. Salad dressing… ground lamb…
Traxler: Sick!

…

Grady [narrating]: James’ story was the stuff of bad fiction…and under other circumstances, I might’ve wondered where the page ended with him and real life began. But I had other things on my mind.

…

James [holding out a doughnut]: You want one? They’re incredible. Incredible.
Grady: Smoke the rest of that joint, James, you’ll start chewing on the box.

…

Grady: Okay, James, I wish you hadn’t shot my girlfriend’s dog. Even though Poe and I weren’t exactly what you’d call simpatico, that’s no reason he should’ve taken two in the chest.

…

Grady [to operator]: It’s not like I’m making this up as I go…Never mind. It’s my mistake.

…

Grady: Let me ask you something, James. In the past 36 hours, have you told me one thing that’s true? One thing that comes from you?
James: I just wanted to stay with you for a little while, that’s all.
Grady: I’m a teacher, James. I’m not a Holiday lnn.

…

Terry: I’m gonna publish this. I think with the proper editorial guidance this could be brilliant.
Grady: Aw, that’s great. That’s great. Between Officer Pupcik and you, he can be the next Jean Genet. Been a long time since somebody wrote a really good book in jail.

…

Sara: You didn’t happen to call our house last night, did you?
Grady: I think I might have, yes.
Sara: What do you think you might have said?
Grady: I think I might have said I was in love with you.
[pause]
Grady: He told you?
Sara: He told me.
Grady: And what did you say?
Sara: I said it didn’t sound like you.

…

Terry: Let me get this straight. Jerry Nathan owes you money, so as collateral he gives you his car.
Grady: Only I’m beginning to think that the car wasn’t exactly Jerry’s to give.
Terry: Ah, so whose car was it?
Grady: My guess? Vernon Hardapple.
Terry: The hood jumper?
Grady: He said a few things that lead me to believe that the car was his.
Terry: Such as?
Grady: “That’s my car, motherfucker.”

…

Grady: Vernon, relax.
Oola: Why is he calling you Vernon?
Vernon: Why is he sitting in my car? He’s crazy, that’s why! He probably calls everybody Vernon!

…

Grady: Oh my God! I take it back. Shoot him.

…

Terry: [after he lost Grady’s manuscript] Naturally you have copies.
Grady: I have an alternate version of the first chapter.

…

Vernon: But you got to know what the book was about, right? If you didn’t even know what it was about, why were you writing it?
Grady: I couldn’t stop.[/b]

[iambiguous]

A truly scathing caricature of American politics. The reactionary rendition in particular. It’s fucking brilliant from start to finish. Thus the 100% rating on 36 reviews over at RT.

Of course, if you are a conservative you might not see this mockumentary in quite the same way.

And it’s not for nothing that Robbins touts Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap as one of his favorite films.

IMDb

[b]The scene in which Bob Roberts meets the wife and children of the local mayor is a pastiche on Bob Dylan’s Dont Look Back, where Bob meets the wife and children of the local sheriff.

When Tim Robbins approached his actor friends about doing the movie, he said most of them asked to play newscasters.

The first three albums by Bob Roberts - The Freewheelin’ Bob Roberts, Times Are Changin’ Back, and Bob on Bob - were spoofs of/based on/homages to Bob Dylan’s classic albums The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A’Changin’ and Blonde On Blonde, respectively, including the cover photos on the first two.

Tim Robbins touted this project around the various studios for six years. Ironically, for a film about the American political process, it was the English production company Working Title that came up with the necessary funds.[/b]

Actually, only someone very naive about the way the world works [especially over here] would find this ironic.

wiki

In the case of Gore Vidal’s character, the majority of the lines were not scripted, and instead Vidal based his role upon his own political beliefs, and his real-life positions on many of the fictional election topics.

Go Carol!!

BOB ROBERTS
Written and directed by Tim Robbins

Bob Roberts: [singing] Some people will have / Some simply will not / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Some people will work / Some never will / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Like this: / It’s society’s fault I don’t have a job / It’s society’s fault I’m a slob / I’m a drunk, I don’t have a brain / Give me a pamplet while I complain / Hey pal you’re living in the land of the free/ No-one’s gonna hand you opportunity.

One of many such “songs” strewn throughout the film.

[b]Narrator: His second album The Times Are Changin’ Back peaked at number 3 on the charts. Quite an achievment for a gentleman that Spin magazine once called, “a crypto-fascist clown”.

…

Bob [on morning talk show]: Let’s face it, the 60s were a dark stain on American history. Never was there a time when lawlessness and immorality had been so widespread.
Kelly: You’re speaking of course of Watergate and the invasion of Cambodia.

…

Kelly: Is social protest a disregard for our laws and institutions?
Bob: Certainly it is.
Kelly: And yet it is a guaranteed right in our Constitution.
Bob: So is burning the flag. Need I say more?
Kelly: Yes, you need say more. Or are we to believe that what Bob Roberts stands for is a silent and a complient public which respects the wishes and actions of its president no matter how immoral or illegal.
Bob: Are you a Communist?

…

Kelly: Bob Roberts is yet another of that faction that lives to destroy whatever good came out of the 60s, to rewrite the history of that important period. A period where the American people actually were informed and aware, and realized that they had a voice. They demanded that a war end. Bob Roberts is Nixon, only he’s shrewder, more complicated, this Bob Roberts. Now here is a man who has adopted the persona and mindset of a free-thinking rebel and turned it on itself. The Rebel Conservative! That is deviant brilliance. What a Machiavellian poser.

…

Senator Brickley Paiste: I’m totally opposed to the war in the Middle East. It’s the enemy-of-the-month club again. Saddam Hussein is said to be the most evil man since Hitler. Before that it was Noriega. He was the most evil man since Fu Manchu. Then there was Gadaffi and Castro. These figures are thrown out through the media and made into great monsters. Why? Because we must justify the military budget. In order to do that we must have enemies. We blow up these local thugs into these huge Hitler-like figures and pretend it’s World War II all over again.

…

Senator Brickley Paiste: I believe in Bob Roberts background – if it is true – that he has had some experience with the CIA. If so, then he comes better prepared than most people do to the Senate with a knowledge of what the real government of the United States is. Which is the National Security Council. The country is governed by the NSC, which is the Defense Department and the CIA in combination with the great makers of weapons around the country. So he has already had some initiation into true power.

…

Cutting Edge Host: In the beginning, our great company provided appliances for the neighborhood. We heated your home, we refrigerated your food, and improved the quality of your life. We prospered, and you loved us. And we grew into a large multinational corporation. In fact, we own this very network…Our chief source of income, however, is the arms industry! Yes, we rely heavily on those fat government contracts, to make these useless weapons of mass destruction. And even though we have been indicted and convicted for fraud several times, you don’t hear too much about our bad side, because, well, we own our own news division…Chances are pretty slim that you’ll hear reports of our environmental mishaps, or the way we bust those unions. We even have a highly-rated Saturday night show that the public buys as entertainment with a leftist slant.[/b]

Some of us have waited years to hear Lorne Michaels Inc. skewered like this. Not that the original cast of SNL weren’t fantastic of course.

[b]Carol: You can’t fucking do this. You lied to me.
Michael: The network has reviewed the material and want it on.
Carol: How dare you! This is obscene. This is a fucking commercial for a fucking political candidate. You have nothing left Michael. You’re nothing but a fucking shill and a goon.
Michael: Are you having your period?

…

Bugs Raplin: You see, the truth of this is that American taxpayers have been paying for covert wars waged in countries we haven’t even heard of. Up until now Americans have payed for these wars everytme they used cocaine or crack or heroin or other drugs smuggled in by these so-called patriots. But now we have a situation where all Americans will soon paying for the smuggling in of all these drugs in the form of taxes to bail out failed savings and loans…savings and loans that misused people’s funds and provided money for the covert drug smuggling operations. And surprise, we find ourselves with a seemingly uncontrollable drug problem.[/b]

How much of this is true? Who the hell really knows. But only a fucking idiot would expect the corporate media to probe very deep below the surface.

[b]Bugs Raplin: The reason that Iran-Contra happened is because nobody did anything substantial about Watergate. And the reason that Watergate happened is that there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They are all the same operatives, didn’t you notice? The foot soldiers in the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran contra: they are all the same people. The same faces. Now it doesn’t take a genius to make the connection here. A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no-one. And the closer we are to discovering the connection, the more the Congress turns a blind eye to it. “We can’t talk about that in open session!” they say. “National security reasons”. The truth lies dormant in their laps and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence.

…

Bugs Raplin: There are no Mr. Smiths in Washington. Mr. Smith has been bought. They’re just a bunch of dealmakers.

…

Bugs Raplin: The corporations and the big businesses that own the networks and the major newspapers, they won’t tell you the truth. It’s not in their interest. It’s too dangerous to them. If you want the truth in this country you have to seek it out. You must be vigilant, unrelenting, uncompromising.[/b]

Man, you can get assassinated for saying shit like that!

[iambiguous]

A true story.

A gun nut. But is he a gun nut?

Someone is pissed off about something. Or about someone. They have access to the poor man’s rendition of weapons of mass destruction. Then “out of the blue” they “snap”. Then it comes down to the particular motive. For example, is God involved? How were they “wronged”? Why did the victums “deserve” it?

What’s scary about these things is we never really know who it will be next. Or why? And how close you or I might be to it. Little mini 9/11s unfolding in a whack-a-mole world. This guy is particular dangerous because he seems to be pissed off at the world. In other words, if you live in it you’re a target.

Oh, and these sort of “events” seem to happen with such frequency in the United States, the headlines barely last more then a few days.

Depending on the news cycle.

Still, the more fascinating question [to me, in this world] has always been: Why doesn’t it happen more often?

Of the 13 gunned down, 4 were children aged 11 or younger.

wiki

[b]The production faced some opposition from the town, and as a result, little filming was done in Aramoana itself, though the community did allow some scenes to be shot in the settlement. Some members of the community were against the movie being filmed, but they agreed when it was settled that they would see the movie first, and it would not be called ‘Aramoana.’ Most of the filming was shot in Long Beach, a settlement six kilometres from Aramoana.

The film deals with violence in a realistic but restrained way. The effect the film has on its audience is likely to depend on the circumstances of the viewer. Mr Hastings said “for some of those closely involved in the events it portrays the film may be upsetting and traumatic. Other people may view it as a sensitive portrayal of the responses of ordinary people to horrific events.”[/b]

NZ trailer

youtube.com/watch?v=35M3jSusb-w

OUT OF THE BLUE
Written and directed by Robert Sarkies

[b]Teller: Banker’s check made out to Frontier Guns and Ammunition. There’s a banking fee of $2.00 on that check.
Gray: $2.00?
Teller: It’s the standard fee for a bank check, Mr. Gray.
Gray: You’ve never charged me before. No way. There’s no way. I’ve banked here all my life. My father used to bank here…No way! I’ve banked here all my life! MY FATHER BANKED HERE! AM I NOT HIS SON?!! NO WAY! IT’S MY MONEY! I’VE GOT A RIGHT! IT’S MY MONEY!!!

…

Garry’s Mother: No crime in being eccentric, or they’d lock up half the Spit. Thay’d lock you up.

…

Gray [at the gunshop]: I appreciate your professional approach. You don’t get it everywhere.
Shop owner: Bad day?
Gray: Town’s full of idiots and incompetents.

…

Police radio: Gray is the offender. David Gray, 37 years, uh, he’s certainly eccentric.

…

Stu Guthrie: If you’re approached by this person with an automatic weapon, you are to identify him. Call on him to surrender. If he doesn’t, he has to be shot. Repeat. He can be shot.

…

Vanessa: Nick, can you see the kids? Can you see Stacey? Nick, just find my babies. Just find the kids, Nick.

…

Sheriff: I could have shot him. He was square in my sights. I waited…hesitated [shakes his head] fucking gone.

…

Stacey [whimpering]: Please don’t shoot me. Please don’t.

…

Stacey: Do you know Leo and Dion? They’re asleep.[/b]

And the moral is…

[iambiguous]

There is no way many folks watching this film today can even begin to appreciate it as much as those who lived smack dab in the middle of the Cold War. This film was in theaters just a couple of years after the Cuban Missle Crisis. To say the fear of nuclear holocaust was palpable back then does not even come close to the dread many folks carried around with them day in and day out.

What else could really be done but turn it all into a joke?

Think about it this way: Can you even begin to imagine Dubya Bush and Dick Cheney in power at the time? We would still be living in caves.

This is one of those movies you figure has got to be at least 3 hours long. But it barely comes in at half that.

And then you ask: How many Academy Awards did it win? None. Gee, if only it had been up against The Color Purple instead of My Fair Lady.

IMDb

[b]Peter Sellers was also cast as Maj. T.J. “King” Kong, but he had trouble developing a Texas accent.

Peter Sellers improvised most of his lines.

As research, Stanley Kubrick read nearly 50 books about nuclear war.

Based on the novel “Red Alert” by Peter George, and originally conceived as a tense thriller about the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Stanley Kubrick was working on the script when he realized that many scenes he had written were actually quite funny. He then brought in Terry Southern to turn the story into a satire

In one version of the script, aliens from outer space observed all of the action.

The character of General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) was patterned after Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who was renowned for his extreme anti-Communist views and who once stated that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if he was elected president.

The film led to actual changes in policy to ensure that the events depicted could never really occur in real life.[/b]

wiki

Dr. Strangelove takes passing shots at numerous Cold War attitudes, such as the “missile gap”, but it primarily focuses its satire on the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred from a nuclear war by the prospect of a universal cataclysmic disaster regardless of who “won”. Military strategist and former physicist Herman Kahn, in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War, used the theoretical example of a doomsday machine to illustrate the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD); in effect, Kahn argued, both sides already had a sort of doomsday machine, since their nuclear arsenals were large enough to destroy most life on Earth.

Ending song:

youtube.com/watch?v=vdytOGnUFoI

DR STRANGELOVE
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick

[b]Title Card: It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film. Furthermore, it should be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead.

…

Ripper: The base is being put on Condition Red. I want this flashed to all sections immediately.
Mandrake: Condition Red, sir, yes, jolly good idea. That keeps the men on their toes.
Ripper: Group Captain, I’m afraid this is not an exercise.
Mandrake: Not an exercise, sir?
Ripper: I shouldn’t tell you this, Mandrake, but you’re a good officer and you’ve a right to know. It looks like we’re in a shooting war.
Mandrake: Oh, hell. Are the Russians involved, sir?

…

Major Kong: Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin’. Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human bein’s if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelin’s about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin’ on you and by golly, we ain’t about to let ‘em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing’s over with. That goes for ever’ last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let’s get this thing on the hump - we got some flyin’ to do.

…

Mandrake: Uh, what about the planes, sir? Surely we must issue the recall code immediately.
Ripper: Group Captain, the planes are not gonna be recalled. My attack orders have been issued, and the orders stand.
Mandrake: Well, if you’ll excuse me saying so, sir, that would be, to my way of thinking, rather, well, rather an odd way of looking at it. You see, if a Russian attack was in progress, we would certainly not be hearing civilian broadcast.
Ripper: Are you certain of that, Mandrake?
Mandrake: Oh, I’m absolutely positive about it.
Ripper: And what if it is true?
Mandrake: Well, I’m afraid I’m still not with you, sir, because, I mean, if a Russian attack was not in progress, then your use of Plan R - in fact, your order to the entire Wing…Oh. I would say, sir, that there were something dreadfully wrong somewhere.
Ripper: Now why don’t you just take it easy, Group Captain, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you’d like.
[Mandrake snaps to attention and salutes]
Mandrake: General Ripper, Sir, as an officer in Her Majesty’s Air Force, it is my clear duty, under the present circumstances, to issue the recall code, upon my own authority, and bring back the Wing…
Ripper: I told you to take it easy, Group Captain. There’s nothing anybody can do about this thing now. I’m the only person who knows the three letter code group.

…

Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Mandrake: No, I don’t think I do, sir, no.
Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

…

President: Then do you mean to tell me, General Turgidson, that you will be unable to recall the aircraft?
Turgidson: That’s about the size of it. However, we are plowing through every possible three letter combination of the code. But since there are seventeen thousand permutations it’s going to take us about two and a half days to transmit them all.
President: How soon did you say the planes would penetrate Russian radar cover?
Turgidson: About eighteen minutes from now, sir.

…

Turgidson: General Ripper called Strategic Air Command headquarters shortly after he issued the go code. I have a portion of the transcript of that conversation if you’d like me to to read it.
President: Read it!
Turgidson: Ahem… The Duty Officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he had issued the go code, and he said, uh, “Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation. Uh, my boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won’t stop them now, uhuh. Uh, so let’s get going, there’s no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural… fluids. God bless you all” and he hung up. Uh, we’re, still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
President: There’s nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: Well, uh, I’d like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
President: General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring!
Turgidson: Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.

…

Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President: You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!
Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

…

Turgidson: Is that the Russian ambassador you’re talking about?
President: Yes it is, General.
Turgidson: A-A-Am I to understand the Russian ambassador is to be admitted entrance to th-the War Room?
President: That is correct, he is here on my orders.
Turgidson: I… I don’t know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean, he’ll see everything, he’ll…he’ll see the Big Board!

…

Major Kong: Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days’ concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

…

Adm. Randolph: Try one of these Jamaican cigars, Ambassador. They’re pretty good.
Ambassador de Sadesky: Thank you, no. I do not support the work of imperialist stooges.
Adm. Randolph: Oh, only commie stooges, huh?

…

President: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.

…

Ambassador de Sadesky: The fools…the mad fools.
President: What’s happened?
Ambassador de Sadesky: The doomsday machine.
President:The doomsday machine? What is that?
Ambassador de Sadesky: A device which will destroy all human and animal life on earth. When it is detonated, it will produce enough lethal radioactive fallout so that within ten months, the surface of the earth will be as dead as the moon!
Turgidson: Ah, come on DeSadeski, that’s ridiculous. Our studies show that even the worst fallout is down to a safe level after two weeks.
Ambassador de Sadesky: You’ve obviously never heard of cobalt thorium G.
Turgidson: No, what about it?
Ambassador de Sadesky: Cobalt thorium G has a radioactive halflife of ninety three years. If you take, say, fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with cobalt thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety three years!
Turgidson: Ah, what a load of commie bull.
President: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you build such a thing as a doomsday machine?
Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.
President: This is preposterous. I’ve never approved of anything like that.
Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.

…

President: But, how is it possible for this doomsday device to be triggered automatically, and at the same time impossible to untrigger?
Strangelove: Mr. President, it is not only possible, it is essential. That is the whole idea of this machine, you know. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy… the fear to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying. It’s simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing.
Turgidson: Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.

…

Strangelove: but the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, eh?
Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

…

Ripper: Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, no, I can’t say I have.

…

Mandrake: Colonel! Colonel, I must know what you think has been going on here!
Colonel “Bat” Guano: You wanna know what I think?
Mandrake: Yes!
Colonel “Bat” Guano: I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts. Now MOVE!

…

Mandrake [to Guano]: If you don’t put that gun away and stop this stupid nonsense, the court of Enquiry on this’ll give you such a pranging, you’ll be lucky if you end up wearing the uniform of a bloody toilet attendant.

…

Mandrake [trying to pay for his phone call]: Colonel, they will not let me through without the right amount. Do you have an extra 18 cents on you?
Colonel “Bat” Guano: You don’t think I’d go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do you?

…

Mandrake: Colonel…that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
Colonel “Bat” Guano: That’s private property.
Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That’s what the bullets are for, you twit!
Colonel “Bat” Guano: Okay. I’m gonna get your money for ya. But if you don’t get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what’s gonna happen to you?
Mandrake: What?
Colonel “Bat” Guano: You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.

…

Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m beginning to smell a big fat commie rat.

…

President: General Turgidson, is there really a chance for that plane to get through?
Turgidson: Mr. President, if I may speak freely, the Russkie talks big, but frankly, we think he’s short of know how. I mean, you just can’t expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys. And that’s not meant as an insult, Mr. Ambassador, I mean, you take your average Russkie, we all know how much guts he’s got. Hell, lookit look at all them them Nazis killed off and they still wouldn’t quit.
President: Can’t you stick to the point, General?
Turgidson: Well, I’m sorry. Ah…If the pilot’s good, see. I mean, if he’s really sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low spreads his arms like wings., laughs you oughtta see it sometime, it’s a sight. A big plane, like a ‘52, vroom! There’s jet exhaust, flyin’ chickens in the barnyard!
President: Yeah, but has he got a chance?
Turgidson: Has he got a chance? Hell Ye… ye…

…

President: You mean people could actually stay down there in the mineshafts for a hundred years?
Strangelove: It would not be difficult, Mein Führer. Nuclear reactors could - heh, I’m sorry, Mr. President - nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely.

…

President: Well I…I would hate to have to decide… who stays up and… who goes down.
Strangelove: Well, that would not be necessary Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.

…

Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious…service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

…

Turgidson: Mr President, I think we should look at this from the military point of view. I mean, supposing the Russkies stashes away some big bomb, see. When they come out in a hundred years they could take over!
General: I agree, Mr. President. In fact, they might even try an immediate sneak attack so they could take over our mineshaft space.
Turgidson: Yeah. I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!

…

Strangelove: Mr President! I have a plan!
[standing up from his wheelchair]
Strangelove: Mein Führer! I can walk![/b]

[iambiguous]

What a tumultuous waste of human life. And so many families ripped to pieces. It is impossible however to talk about it – to either sympathize or not with the plight of these people – without espousing one or another political narrative. I condemned American involvement there while spending a year of my life as a soldier at MACVs in Lam Son and Song Be. On the other hand I have no sympathies now for anything related to Communism. The experience is just stuck there in my head [and my heart] in a way I can never let go of.

And talk about being a pawn in one or another’s game. Or maybe even in your own. This is a particularly wrenching example of folks forced to make many critical decisions with little hard information. A kind of endless round of Russian Roulette. The individual here becomes like a grain of sand just swept along in the contingency, chance and change that is human history.

But isn’t this film really just more propaganda? Everything after all revolves around the narratives favored by Ham Tran.

wiki

[b]Journey from the Fall (Vietnamese: Vượt Sóng) is a 2006 independent film by writer/director/editor Ham Tran, about the Vietnamese reeducation camp and boat people experience following the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The film is notable for having been financed entirely by the Vietnamese American community.

An early cut of the film was screened in April 2005 in sold-out one-day-only showings in Little Saigon, Washington, D.C., and San Jose to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. The film was highly-praised by the Vietnamese diaspora as an accurate presentation of the experiences that many Vietnamese people had to go through.

In Vietnam, where the film was neither filmed nor shown officially, pirated copies were so prevalent that the government issued orders to confiscate all DVD copies.[18] The film was banned for its “reactionary” content. The government consider the film “defamation” and a “distortion” of its policy of sending people to reeducation camps after 1975. The film was considered such a threat that the Ministry of Public Security’s newspaper Công an Nhân dân featured an article warning about the “poisonous film” and claiming that “most overseas Vietnamese are indifferent or critical of this movie”.[19] The article also quoted Foundas and several random people in online message boards to bolster its claim.[/b]

trailer

youtube.com/watch?v=e84lOfQH0FM

JOURNEY FROM THE FALL
Written and directed by Ham Tran

[b]Long: The Americans have abandoned us. They’ve broken their promise.
Mai: Then we should go. Everyone is leaving too. The war is already lost. What’s left to fight for? The Americans have left us!
Long: Screw the Americans! Do you think things would be any different if they had won?

…

Prisoner: Are you a political prisoner? The world is so screwed up these days. You try to leave by boat and you are a traitor. I told them straight. I’m not abandoning Vietnam. I just don’t want to live in a Communist opera.
Long: Your index finger. Whose work is that?
Prisoner [with half his index finger missing]: This? It’s my work. Bored I counted my fingers and toes. When-the-draft-comes-this-one-will-go.
Long: You dodged the draft by cutting off your finger?
Prisoner: It was either my finger or my charming smile.

…

Prisoner: In this war, Communist or Nationalist, North or South…I couldn’t care less. My fathers before me, in their fight against the French and Chinese, they all fought for noble causes. But me, liberating Vietnam from Vietnam? Nothing noble about that.

…

Prisoner: This life is like being in a box. But this box is inside another box.
Long: If this is how you feel, why bother to escape the country at all?
Prisoner: To find a bigger box.

…

Trai [a prisoner looking at photograph of his daughter]: Phuong. Do you know how much Daddy misses you? Is anyone mistreating you? I’m sorry I can’t be there to protect you. Daddy is useless.

…

Prisoner: What about the unexploded mines?
Long: To get to life, you have to risk death.
Prisoner: It’s too dangerous.
Long: You play the odds.

…

Camp Commander: There is a French philosopher by the name of E.M. Cioran. He published a book called The Temptation To Exist. He was an existentialist. His philosophy is that most of our discoveries are the result of acts of violence. Personally, I don’t follow existentialism. But under the circumstances, I think Cioran has a point.

…

Camp Commander: Do you know why we won the war?
Long: Because…because of blind luck?
Camp Commander: Faith. We believed that we were fighting to free Vietnam.
Long: Funny. At this moment, I don’t feel the least bit free.
Camp Commander: You are a prisoner of your own ideology. No amount of re-education will help you understand what it means to be free.
Long: Major. Would you like to hear a joke? What is the difference between a re-educatiom camp and other prisons?
Camp Commander: What is the difference?
Long: In a prison you know what your crime is, and how long your sentence lasts.
Camp Commander: Do you knoiw why people are more afraid of Communists than they are of death?
Long: I don’t know.
Camp Commander: Because everyone knows that Communists have no sense of humor.
[then he beats and kicks him]

…

Ba Noi: You should thank Buddha.
Mai: When we first got to America Grandma wanted to become a Buddhist nun. She believes it was Buddha that rescued us from the boat.
Phuong: You should know this by now. On the boat people prayed to any and every God just to stay alive.
Ba Noi: Actually, for any of us to have survived what happened on the boat, was surely an act of Buddha.
Mai: Why couldn’t it have been a stroke of luck?
Ba Noi: Because living without faith is just as good as being dead.
Phuong: Over here they have an expression. If you’re missing anything in life, you’ll find it at the mall.

…

Mai: How did you manage to adapt to this new life in just one year?
Phuong: My fourth uncle helped me out a lot. He taught me something. If you want to make a new life for yourself in America, then you have to abandon all your past.

…

Trai’s friend from the camps finds Phuong: Praise Buddha that I have found you today, in the name of your father. I have carried this photograph around for almost two years. But today, I finally get to meet you face to face. I was in the Da Ban re-education camp with your father…Your father asked me to find you and deliver this photograph. Your father always loved you, and every night, he would look at this photo and cry. Phuong, you were your father’s only reason for living. Don’t…don’t ever forget that.[/b]

[winstonHUMBERTsmith]

Alan Dershowitz: Why - why do you think this case fascinates people? 'Cause, one time or other, every man is driven crazy by his wife, and in his secret heart, he wants to do exactly what Claus is accused of: kill her in some sly, silent way that can’t be detected. Claus is a scapegoat: someone has to suffer for the sin that we all want to commit.
Team member: Alan… that’s ridiculous.
Alan Dershowitz: It’s ridiculous, you’re right

Reversal of Fortune

[iambiguous]

The side of capitalism most of us [eventually] will see—one way or the other.

Incredibly, this film lost money. Or, to put it another way: predictably, this film lost money.

In part, this is about competency and incompetency. But, in part, it is also about siccing people on each in a dehumanizing dog eat dog slugfest over selling “properties” that no one really needs. Properties some have to be convinced [or conned into believing] they want. Everything becomes just another commodity in the market. Including the folks selling them. It all becomes a big con game. Lie after lie after lie. To the customers. To each other. And, if necessary, you stab your “colleagues” in the back if it gets you where you want to go. Or have to go.

Still, you actually find yourself feeling sorry for the worst sonofabitch among them: Shelly “the machine” Levine. After all, he’s the guy who really did “fuck Mitch and Murray”. Or, rather, tried to.

IMDb

[b]During filming, members of the cast who weren’t required to be on the set certain days would show up anyway to watch the other actors’ performances.

Ever since its release, the film has been used to train real life salesmen how to sell and how not to sell.

Only a single female character (Coat Check Girl) appears throughout the entire movie.[/b]

wiki

[b]The film, like the play, is notorious for its use of profanity, leading the cast to jokingly refer to the film as “Death of a Fuckin’ Salesman”.

Because of the film’s modest budget, many of the actors took significant pay cuts. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million, Lemmon was paid $1 million, Baldwin received $250,000, and so on. This did not stop other actors, like Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and Joe Mantegna, from expressing interest in the film.

Lemmon’s portrayal of Shelley Levene was a major source of inspiration in the creation of the recurring The Simpsons character Gil Gunderson. The character had a Simpsons’ Christmas Special episode dedicated to him in “Kill Gil, Volumes I & II”. The character borrows many of the twitchy, nervous mannerisms of the Lemmon character, and is oft portrayed in a desperate situation as an unsuccessful salesman.[/b]

According to IMDb, the word “fuck” and its derivatives are spoken 138 times.

I used to think this must be some kind of a record. Not even close:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fi … %22fuck%22

On the other hand, GGR isn’t even on this, uh, fucking list! Is it? What’s that all about?

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
Directed by James Foley

Ricky: They say that it was so hot in the city today, grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot them.

Here is one of the truly great exchanges in cinematic history: youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0

[b]Blake: You’re talking about what.You’re talking about…Bitching about that sale you shot, some sonofabitch who don’t wanna buy land, some broad you’re trying to screw, so forth. Let’s talk about something important. They all here?
Williamson: All but one.
Blake: I’m going anyway. Let’s talk about something important. Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only. You think I’m fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I’m here from downtown. I’m here from Mitch and Murray. And I’m here on a mission of mercy. Your name’s Levine? You call yourself a salesman you son of a bitch?
Moss: I don’t gotta sit here and listen to this shit.
Blake: You certainly don’t pal, 'cause the good news is - you’re fired. The bad news is - you’ve got, all of you’ve got just one week to regain your jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money, get their names to sell them. you can’t close the leads youre given you can’t close shit. You ARE shit. Hit the bricks pal, and beat it ‘cause you are going OUT.
Shelley: The leads are weak.
Blake: The leads are weak? Fucking leads are weak. You’re weak. I’ve been in this business 15 years…
Moss: What’s your name?
Blake: Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? You drove a Hyundai to get here. I drove an eighty-thousand dollar BMW. THAT’S my name. And your name is you’re wanting. You can’t play in the man’s game, you can’t close them - go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you fucking faggots?! A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. A-I-D-A. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action. Attention - Do I have you attention? Interest - Are you interested? I know you are, because it’s fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision - Have you made your decision, for Christ? And Action. A-I-D-A. Get out there - you got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They’re sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it? What’s the problem, pal?
Moss: You - Moss. You’re such a hero, you’re so rich, how come you’re coming down here wasting your time with such a bunch of bums?
Blake: You see this watch? You see this watch?
Moss: Yeah.
Blake: That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much’d you make? You see pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing. Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here - close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can’t take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don’t like it, leave. I can go out there tonight with the materials you’ve got and make myself $15,000. Tonight! In two hours! Can you? Can YOU? Go and do likewise. A-I-D-A. Get mad you son of a bitches. Get mad. You want to know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes BRASS BALLS to sell real estate. Go and do likewise gents. The money out there. You pick it up, it’s yours. You don’t, I got no sympathy for you. You wanna go out on those sits tonight and close, CLOSE. It’s yours. If not you’re gonna be shining my shoes. And you know what you’ll be saying - a bunch of losers sittin’ around in a bar. ‘Oh yeah. I used to be a salesman. It’s a tough racket.’ These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they’re gold, and you don’t get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They’re for closers. I’d wish you good luck but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it. And to answer you question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and fire your fucking ass because a loser is a loser.

…

Shelly [calling the hospital where his daughter is a patient]: I can’t come in tonight. Yes, I know she is. I know she is. I’ve gotta go out…I’ve got to go out. Tell her I’ll call her from the road.

…

Moss: Deadbeats. All of them.

…

Spannel: So you’re here to sell me some land?
Shelly: Oh, no…no…I wouldn’t try to sell you…I…I leave that to the salesmen and people who want to own land.
Spannel: Mr…
Shelly: Just call me Shelly. I have never been afraid of familiarity.
Spannel: I’m walking out the door. I’ve got to pick up my wife at the…
Shelly: Why don’t we take my car. We can pick her up together. Spoke to the little woman on the phone—can’t wait to meet her.
Spannel: No, we’re going over to our relatives.
Shelly: Oh, she didn’t say anything about that. Let me think. You know, that’s the only parcel I’ve got. You know what I’m going to do? I’m gonna go back to the computer, I’m gonna pull another one, and we’re gonna speak to your relatives too!
Spannel: No, no, no, no.
Shelly: My God, I’m in the act of giving a gift away.
Spannel: Look, I don’t want to buy land. I don’t want to invest in land. I have nothing. She took the call without my knowledge. I have no business with you that I want to transact.
Shelly: Well, I don’t want to tell you how to handle your wife.
Spannel [increasingly more exasperated]: My wife filled out a form, and we have been plagued for the last year with…
Shelly: Well that’s the situation I am trying to alleviate, Larry.
Spannel: No, no. Do you understand? No.[/b]

What a shitty way to earn a living. And, really, could Blake have closed it instead?

[b]Moss: Some guy pissing in your face. Wants to break your rice bowl. Mitch and Murray, fuck you. Fuck you!!

…

Moss: I’ll tell you what someone should do.
George: What?
Moss: Someone should stand up and strike back. Someone should do something to them to pay them back.
George: What?
Moss: Someone should hurt them where they live. Someone should rob the office.

…

Ricky: All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don’t mind it. That’s the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time. When you die you’re going to regret the things you don’t do. You think you’re queer? I’m going to tell you something: we’re all queer. You think you’re a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You cheat on your wife? You did it, live with it. You fuck little girls, so be it. There’s an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won’t live in it. That’s me.

…

Shelly [trying to phone his daughter’s room at the hospital]: They cancelled her phone?!..Okay, I’ll have the money there tomorrow.

…

George: When I talk to the police I get nervous.
Ricky: Yes. You know who doesn’t?
George: Who?
Ricky: Thieves.
George: I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.
Ricky: The truth, George. Always tell them the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember.

…

Ricky: Patel? Ravidam Patel? How am I going to make a living on these deadbeats? Where did you get this from, the morgue?

…

Williamson: [handing Roma lead cards] I’m giving you three leads…
Ricky: Three? No, I count two.
Williamson: There’s three leads there.
Ricky: “Patel”? Fuck you. Fucking Shiva handed this guy a million dollars, told him “Sign the deal!” he wouldn’t sign. And the god Vishnu too, into the bargain. Fuck you, John! You know your business, I know mine. Your business is being an asshole. I find out whose fucking cousin you are, I’m going to go to him and figure out a way to have your ass - fuck you!
[throws the cards at Williamson]

…

Moss: A cop couldn’t find his dick with two hands and a map.

…

Ricky: Who said ‘fuck the machine’?
Moss: Fuck the machine? Fuck the machine? FUCK THE MACHINE! What is this, courtesy class?

…

Ricky: Fuck you, Dave. You know you got a big mouth. You make a close, this whole place stinks with your farts for a week - how much you just ingested. Oh, what a big man you are! “Hey, let me buy you a pack of gum. I’ll show you how to chew it.” Whoof! You’re pal closes, and all that comes out of your mouth is bile. Ooh, how fucked-up you are!
Moss: Who’s my pal, Ricky? Hmm? What are you? And what are you, Ricky? Huh? Bishop Sheen? What the fuck are you, Mr. Slick? Who - what the fuck are you, “Friend to the working man”? Big deal! FUCK YOU! You got the memory of a fuckin’ fly! I never liked you, anyway.

…

Ricky: Anyone in this office lives by his wits. WHAT YOU’RE HIRED FOR, is to help us. Does that seem clear to you? TO HELP US, not to FUCK-US-UP…to help those who are going out there to try to earn a living. You fairy. You company man.

…

Ricky: You wanna know the first rule…you’d know if you ever spent a day in your life doing what we do. You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.

…

Shelly: If you’re gonna make something up, be sure that it helps. Hmm? Or keep your mouth shut. I’m done with you.
[Wlliamson thinks about that]
Williamson: How do you know I made it up?
Shelley: Say what?
Williamson: How do you know I made it up?
Shelley: What are you talking about?
Williamson: You said, “Don’t make something up unless it’s sure to help.”
Shelly [nodding] Mm hmm.
Williamson: How did you know I made it up?
Shelly: What are you talking about?
Williamson: I told the customer his contract had gone to the bank.
Shelley: Hadn’t it?
Williamson: No, it hadn’t.
Shelley: Don’t fuck with me… Don’t fuck with me! What are you saying?
Williamson: Well, I’m saying this Shell; usually I take the contracts to the bank. Last night I didn’t. Last night I stayed home with my kids. One night in a year I left the contracts sitting on my desk, no one knew that but you. Now, how did you know that? Do you wanna tell me or do you want to tell the cops?
Shelly: You are so full of shit!
Williamson: You robbed the office.

…

[Williamson goes to rat out Shelly to the cops]
Shelley: Don’t.
Williamson: I’m sorry.
Shelley: Why?
Williamson: Because I don’t like you.
Shelley: [in tears] My daughter.
Williamson: Fuck you.

…

Cop: Ricky can’t help you, pal.[/b]

[iambiguous]

For me it will always be New York Story. The bits by Coppola and Allen barely register.

What is it like to create art that is considered to be “great” by many? And what is it like to create art that is considered to be mediocre by someone who creates the great art? The Salieri syndrome again for sure. She wants to be something that is beyond her talents. And probably always will be.

Or, when push comes to shove, is this more about her – young and beautiful of course – being his “girlfriend”? That as I recall was my daughter’s contention. Especially given the ending.

But this also brings us back to the stuff I broached above in My Kid Could Paint That. Who gets to say what is mediocre or great art…and why?

One thing seems clear: great art means living right on the edge of the crater. When it’s not the abyss.

Look for: Peter Gabriel, Illeana Douglas, Deborah Harry.

Great soundtrack.

IMDb

Nick Nolte’s paintings are actually the work of artist Chuck Connelly.

chuckconnelly.net/

[b]According to a story related in the documentary “The Art of Failure”, on artist Chuck Connelly, Martin Scorsese was very impressed with Connelly’s work and was planning on taking some of it back to Los Angeles to try to line up buyers for his work. However, just before that, Connelly gave an interview to the New York Post ripping both the movie and Scorsese personally. Scorsese withdrew the offer, and Connelly soon fell into obscurity.

The performance piece that Steve Buscemi delivers in the Martin Scorsese segment was conceived and written by the actor himself.[/b]

Not too impressive in my view. Or was that the point—to view it from the perspective of “the Lion”?

NEW YORK STORIES
“LIFE LESSONS”
Directed by Martin Scorcese

[b]Phillip: So when would you think would be a good time for me to come back? The show’s in three weeks you know.
[Lionel pushes the elevator button and down Phillip goes]
Phillip: Oh, Lionel! You go through this before every show! I’m talking twenty years of this! Now get to know yourself a little better! You can pull it off, Lionel. You always do!

…

Paulette: You should listen to your machine.
Lionel: “Listen to your machine”? Doesn’t that have a horrifying ring to it, that expression, “Do you listen to your machine”?

…

Lionel: Who is this guy? I know him, right?
Paulette: Gregory Stark.
Lionel: That kid? The comedian?
Paulette: A performance artist.
Lionel: Performance artist. What the hell is a performance artist? A person’s an actor, a singer, a dancer. I mean do you call the guy that picks up your garbage a sanitation engineer?

…

Painted on the side of Lionel’s dilapidated pickup truck: RUSSIAN ROULETTE INC.[/b]

You get the picture.

[b]Lionel: What about your painting? Huh? You gonna get a little studio in your parent’s garage? You work for Lionel Dobie. You work for The Lion, baby. You stretch canvas. You run a few errands. You got your own room, a studio. Life lessons that are priceless, plus a salary.

…

Lionel: Look, I’m not kidding. This kills me, you leaving. It’s a suicide. You’re right in the heart of the heart, Paulette. I swear if you walk you’ll curse yourself for the rest of your days.

…

Paulette: I don’t have to sleep with you anymore?
Lionel: I’m your ally against horse dung and fraud. That’s as far as it goes from now on.

…

Lionel [looking at Paulette’s painting]: Mm-hmm. It’s amazing how much more interesting it’s getting.
Paulette: What do you mean, “interesting”?
Lionel: It’s not boring. You know, you got a nice little irony working for you.
Paulette: Irony?
Lionel: Yeah, nice irony.
Paulette: How’s the tension? The last time…
Lionel: It’s nice.
Paulette: Nice?
Lionel: Yeah, nice.
Paulette: You’re full of shit. You know that? Look, could you just tell me if you think I’m any good? How about that? Just tell me…if…if I have any talent or if you think I’m just wasting my time! Because sometimes I feel like I should just quit…Just tell me what you think.
Lionel: What the hell difference does it matter what I think? It’s yours. I mean you make art becasue you have to, because you got no choice. It’s not about talent. It’s about no choice but to do it. Are you any good? Well you’re 22 so who knows. Who cares. If you want to give it up you weren’t a real artist to begin with. [then to himself as he walks away] Christ’s sakes. “If you give it up, you weren’t a real artist to begin with.” What a stupid thing to say![/b]

But is it? The film then cuts to Paulette watching Lionel paint, well, furiously.

[b]Lionel [to Paulette]: You know this guy Wagner, the party giver, he’s in real estate, right? He comes down to my studio one time. He puts his arm around my shoulder and he says, “Lionel, do you understand the importance of Jackson Pollock?” Then he points out all the condos and loft conversion out the window and says,“If it wasn’t for Jackson, none of this would be happening.”

…

Lionel: Are you a graffiti artist, Toro?[/b]

Then that great shot of Lionel painting and looking over at Reuban with that big grin on his face.

[b]Paulette: Do you love me?
Lionel: I said I did yes.
Paulette: You’ll do anything for me?
Lionel: What? Just name it.
Paulette [seeing a patrol car with two policemen in it]: See them? Kiss the driver on the mouth. Then we’ll talk.
Lionel [disbelieving the request and laughing nervously]: What?
Paulette: Come on, and show me how much you love me.
Lionel [shaken and laughing nervously. After a pause]: What if I do? Huh?
Paulette: Then I’ll know your love is true, and if you don’t, your name is King Bullshit, and I pack.

…

Lionel: Is that for me?
Paulette [barely dressed]: Is what for you?
Lionel: You walk around like that in front of me. What’s to stop me from just losing control and taking you?
Paulette: Taking me?
Lionel: I could do anything. You know why? Because I’m nothing to you. So who cares. I could rape you. I could kill you. I could kill myself.
Paulette: Or rape yourself even.
Lionel: I could do anything because I’m nothing. I’m the Invisible Man to you.
Paulette: Good night.

…

Lionel [to Paulette packing to leave]: Okay, look. Maybe it’s me. It’s–No, it’s me. I indulge–I indulge in love. I indulge in making my stuff, and they feed off each other and they come together at times, but this—this is bad. This is selfish. I should try and be a nice person for you. Maybe the key to that is to stop. You know, to stop painting. Maybe I should stop painting and just be a nice person for you. Now is that what you want me to do, huh?!

…

Paulette: You know something? If just once you came by my room and said, “Gee, you’re a terrible painter. Why don’t you get a real job and enjoy it.”
Lionel: Let me tell you something. You think I just use people, just grind them up. Well, you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know how involved I get, or how far down I go. Hell, I was married four times before you were even born so don’t you tell me! [more subsdued] So don’t you tell me…

…

Lionel [fiercely to himself after Paulette’s gone]: Chippies. You know why they call them that? Because they like to chip away at you, man. Take a little chip. That’s your art form. That’s your talent.

…

Lionel [after a very young and very beautiful art show employee touches his hand]: What was that?
Woman: I wanted to touch you for good luck.
Lionel: For me?
Woman: No, for me. Maybe some of it will rub off.
Lionel: What, are you an artist?
Woman: You’re an artist. I’m a painter. I mean I’m trying to—I’m not saying this right.
Lionel: How are you making ends meet?
Woman: It’s an expensive city.
Lionel: Well, its the only city. What’s Folwer pay you, peanuts right?
Woman: Yeah.
Lionel: I need an assistant. I pay room and board and give life lessons that are priceless…plus a salary. You wouldn’t know anybody that needs a job, would you?
Woman: Oh God!
Lionel: What’s your name? I’m Lionel Dobie.[/b]

We don’t need to know her name.

[iambiguous]

In the end it doesn’t matter which train you are on. But who is kidding whom about the part in the middle.

A film within a film within a film like a box within a box within a box like a joke within a joke within a joke like a life within a life within a life.

Sometimes this is my favorite Woody Allen film.

Allen claims [with a straight face] this film is not autobiographical.

IMDb

[b]Working title for this film was “Woody Allen No. 4”. Allen told an interviewer that “I am not even half of the Fellini of 8 1/2”.

This film largely stemmed from a riposte by Woody Allen to a hostile article written about him by novelist Joan Didion, and to the Academy’s seeming indifference to his “serious” film Interiors. This explains the film’s relatively sour mood towards the critical community and indeed the movie-going public.

Feature film debut of Sharon Stone.[/b]

Debut? I challenge you to find her.

wiki

[b]Allen considers this to be one of his best films, along with The Purple Rose of Cairo and Match Point. The film is shot in black-and-white and is reminiscent of Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963), which it parodies.

This movie deals with issues regarding religion, God, and philosophy; especially existentialism, psychology, symbolism, wars and politics. It is also about realism, relationships, and death. It refers to many questions about the meaning of life for mankind.[/b]

Well, duh.

STARDUST MEMORIES
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Critics: “He’s not funny anymore” “He has no balance left” “The guy is losing his mind” “What self-indulgence” “He’s pretentious…his insights are shallow and morbid” “I’ve seen it all before…they try to document their private suffering and fob it off as art” “Doesn’t the man know he’s got the greatest gift of all, the gift of laughter”

…

Dorrie: Mmm. You smell nice.
Sandy: Yeah?
Dorrie: That aftershave. It just made my whole childhood come back with a sudden Proustian rush.
Sandy: Yeah? That’s 'cause I’m wearing Proustian Rush by Chanel. I got a vat of it.

…

Sandy: The last time you cooked the kitchen looked like Hiroshima.

…

Young Girl: I understand you studied philosophy at school.
Sandy: Uh, no, that’s not true. I-I-I did take - I took one course in existential philosophy at, uh, at New York University, and on, uh, on the final…they gave me ten questions, and, uh, I couldn’t answer a single one of 'em. You know? I left 'em all blank…I got a hundred.

…

Fan in Lobby: Can I talk to you about an idea for a film I have?
Sandy: This is not the place.
Fan in Lobby: Do you have a moment, please? It’s a comedy based on that Guyana mass suicide.

…

Jack: Comedy is hostility. It’s rage. What is it the comedian says when his jokes are going well? “I murdered that audience”…“I killed 'em”…“They screamed”…“I broke 'em up.”
Sandy: Yeah. So-so what are you saying? Are you saying that someone like-like myself or… or Laurel and Hardy, or-or Bob Hope are furious?
Jack: Furious or latent homosexual. It’s hidden inside the jokes.

…

Dorrie: I’m fascinating but I’m trouble.

…

Sandy [to Dorrie]: It’s funny, because in my family nobody ever committed suicide, nobody… this was just not a middle-class alternative, you know? I - my mother was too busy running the boiled chicken through the deflavorizing machine to think about shooting herself or anything.

…

Sandy: Oh, what is this? The-the traditional brownies with hash? Is this what you’re giving me?
Shelley: No, no. Look, here’s the hash on the side because I didn’t know how much you took.
Sandy: How much I took? What is it, hollandaise sauce?

…

Woman in audience: People have accused you of being narcissistic.
Sandy: I know. People think that I’m egotistical but it’s not true. As a matter of fact if I did identify with a Greek mythological character it would not be Narcissis.
Man in audience: Who would it be?
Sandy: Zeus.

…

Sandy: To you, I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the loyal opposition.

…

Sandy: I’ve always had trouble falling in love. I can never find the perfect woman. There’s always something wrong. And then I met Doris. A wonderful woman with a great personality. But for some reason I’m just not turned on sexually by her. And then I met Rita. An animal. Nasty, mean, trouble. And I love going to bed with her. But afterwards I always wished I could be back with Doris. I thought, if only I could put Doris’s brain inside Rita’s body.

…

Tony: Yeah, Doris could be fine…funny, bright and wonderful; about two days a month.

…

Fan: Are you Sandy Bates?
Sandy: Uhhh… no.
Fan: Yes, you are.
Sandy: No n-n-n-no, I’m not.
Fan: My mother buys meat in the same butcher shop your mother does.
Sandy: Oh, great.
Fan: Can I have your autograph?
Sandy: Oh, jeez.
Fan: Could you just write: “To Phyllis Weinstein, you unfaithful, lying bitch.”

…

UFO follower #1: Someday you should do a film about flying saucers.
UFO follower #2: Yeah, you only make films about people with personality disorders.

…

UFO follower: I can prove that, if there is life anywhere else in the universe, it will have a Marxist economy.

…

UFO Follower: What have you got against intellectuals?
Sandy: Intellectuals? Nothing, why?
UFO Follower: Mr. Bates, I’ve seen all your films. You really feel threatened by them.
Sandy: Threatened? You’re kidding me. I’ve always said they’re like the mafia. They only kill their own.

…

UFO follower: If you are alienated can you still have children?

…

Voice of Martian: You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes.

…

Sandy [to cop]: You can make an exception with me, I’m a celebrity.

…

Fan #1: What do you think the Rolls Royce represented?
Fan #2: I think it represented his car.

…

Sandy: Just a little while back, just before I died in fact. I was on the operating table and I was searching to try to find something to hang onto, you know, cause when you’re dying your life really does become very authentic and I was reaching for something to give my life meaning and a memory flashed through my mind: It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong which was music I grew up with and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don’t know, I guess it was a combination of everything, the sound of the music, and the breeze, and how beautiful Dorrie looked to me and for one brief moment everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way. It’s funny, that simple little moment of contact moved me in a very, very profound way.[/b]

A variation of this appears in virtually all of his earlier films: Here’s why I don’t blow my brains out.

[iambiguous]

Dito Montiel? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dito_Montiel

Saints. I still don’t recognize my own. But maybe that’s because I never look for them. Got a long list of sinners though.

This is one of those films where you see what people do but all the time you’re thinking: “This is what they should have done”.

Which is just another way of saying, “this is what I would have done.” The only difference being that you probably don’t have a clue about what it is like to experience life the way they do. I think back on all the really, really stupid things I did out on the streets as a kid. But I’m not stupid enough to think that they really were stupid things to do back then. Though some of them were really stupid. Yet back then it all made perfect sense given the manner in which I understood the world. Given the manner in which the world actually was. That’s the existential part. That’s the part so many philosophers do not catch a glimmer of in their…propositions.

Maybe we should just get rid of the working class once and for all. But then who would be around to do the shit details.

These relationships [with family and friends] can get complicated beyond the capacity of anyone to ever understand. Let alone “fix”.

Don’t fear the Reaper?

IMDb

In the scene where Monty has a stroke, Antonio throws a table through the glass window of a door. This was improvised by Channing Tatum, who got so wrapped up in the scene he nearly lost control. The rest of the cast stayed in character and finished the scene, and the director liked it so much he kept it as the final version.

wiki

Dito Montiel states that all the characters in the film are a combination of at least three people and sometimes six or seven, although some characters are given the names of people from real life.

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS
Written and directed by Dito Montiel

[b]Young Dito [to the camera]: My name is Dito. I’m going to leave everyone in this film.

…

Monty: The only things you guys will ever box is oranges.

…

Frank: How loud is this fucking city?!

…

Bumper sticker on Nerf’s car: KEEP HONKING WHILE I RELOAD

…

Diane [to the camera]: My name is Diane and I like to fuck.
Young Laurie [to the camera]: I’m Laurie…and everyone is going to leave me. I know they are.
Jenny [to the camera]: My name is Jenny and everyone here’s a fucking joke.

…

Young Antonio [to the camera]: I’m a fucking piece of shit. And that’s who I am.[/b]

Maybe that’s because his father is always beating him up. NEDS are everywhere. The same vicious cycle occurs wherever poor and working class folks congregate; and try figure out ways to survive from day to day. And then Guiseppe dies.

[b]Dito: Mike, I’m sorry Antonio’s a fucking asshole, man. He’s not always like that. It’s just when he gets around people.

…

Monty: Hey, look at you. Long time no see.

…

Flori: How could you love your father so much in that book and not see him for so long?

…

Young Dito: My friend just got fucking shot. You don’t know what’s happening.
Monty: It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m your father. I love you. I’m your father.
Young Dito: [crying] When were you ever my father?

…

Dito: You don’t know. You don’t know what it was like in that house.
Laurie: You want it straight? 'Cause I’m the only fucking one who’s gonna tell you for some fucking reason. You killed him. You killed your father when you left. Are you hearing me? You fucking killed him. You left a trail of blood when you left. So forget me, forget all this shit, forget it, alright? You killed your mother, and you killed your father. And for the past fucking 20 years, he’s been dying - just waiting for you to come home. Say ‘Daddy, you fucked up.’ ‘Daddy, I fucking hate your guts.’ Daddy whatever the fuck you need to get out of your angsty little fucking head…
Dito: Touch my head one more fucking time I’m gonna go nuts…
Laurie: Go ahead, go fucking nuts. Go fucking nuts. Let it out. Stop fucking running away. You think you’re a fucking man, that’s just a fucking tail between your legs. Go home and take care of your mother. Go home and take care of your father. That’s going to make you a fucking man. That’s all you got left. 'Cause if you don’t do that shit, it’s too fucking late.

…

Dito: Did you love me daddy? Lie and say you did, make me feel like the piece of shit I am. Did you love me? Answer me!
Monty: A father always-…
Dito: Not a father, YOU!

…

[Dito remembering what his father told him way back then]
Monty: You’re just kids, Dito. Just kids. But your friend Antonio, he needs you now. 'Cause he don’t have a nybody to tell him what I just told you.

…

Dito: In the end - just like I said - I left everything, and everyone. But no one, no one has ever left me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Lots of people want to be like them. They just can’t figure out how. Or they know how but there they are: the risks. Too much to lose. Fortunately, that’s why someone invented the word “facsimile”.

Don’t get me wrong: In no way does that include Bobby Peru. But, wow, what a performance by Willem Dafoe!

This is one of those films [and plenty of them exist] that some people will fiercely love and some people will fiercely hate. And, the world being what it is, for the same reasons more often than not.

Look for Crispin Glover as Cousin Dell. See how he interacts with cockroaches. Before he disappeared.

Grace and Isabella: What a pair.

And steer clear of Big Tuna, Texas. The fact that it does not exist doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

Here’s a look at the film from the perspective of Koko Taylor…

youtube.com/watch?v=6J_0o18Shbw

IMDb

[b]During filming, Laura Dern passed out when David Lynch asked her to smoke four cigarettes at once in one deep inhalation. When she came to, she saw a worried Lynch standing above her asking: “Tidbit! Are you alright?”

After filming on the movie had been completed, Nicolas Cage gave Laura Dern his snakeskin jacket.[/b]

Which was in fact his own. It was his idea to use it in the film. Lynch wrote it into the script.

wiki

[b]Monty Montgomery did not think that Lynch would like the book because he did not think it was his “kind of thing”. Lynch loved the book and called Gifford soon afterwards, asking him if he could make a film of it. Lynch remembers, “It was just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened”. Lynch was drawn to what he saw as “a really modern romance in a violent world – a picture about finding love in hell”, and was also attracted to “a certain amount of fear in the picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way”.

Lynch remembers, “It was an awful tough world and there was something about Sailor being a rebel. But a rebel with a dream of the Wizard of Oz is kinda like a beautiful thing”. Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. read an early draft of the screenplay and did not like Gifford’s ending either, so Lynch changed it. However, the director was worried that this change made the film too commercial, “much more commercial to make a happy ending yet, if I had not changed it, so that people wouldn’t say I was trying to be commercial, I would have been untrue to what the material was saying”.

The film won the prestigious 1990 Palme d’Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and was the second of three consecutive American movies to be awarded the honor. (The other two were Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989 and Barton Fink in 1991.)[/b]

WILD AT HEART
Written and directed by David Lynch

[b]Bob Ray: Marietta tells me you been tryin to fuck her in the toilet for the past ten minutes… How 'bout that, tryin to fuck your girl’s mama… Tell me, what’s that little cunt Lula think about that?
Sailor: Uh-oh

…

Sailor: Did I ever tell ya that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?
Lula: About fifty thousand times.

…

Lula: That Johnnie is one clever detective. You know how clever?
Sailor: How clever?
Lula: He told me once he could find an honest man in Washington.

…

Lula: When’d you start smoking, Sail?
Sailor: I guess I started smoking when I was about… four. My momma was already dead then from lung cancer.

…

Sailor: [to Lula] The way your head works is God’s own private mystery.

…

Sailor: I didn’t have much parental guidance. The public defender kept saying that at my parole hearing.

…

Lula: You remind me of my daddy. Mama told me he liked skinny women with breasts that stood up and said “Hello”.

…

Marcelles: You want me to shoot Sailor… in the brains… with a gun?
Marietta: Yes.
Marcelles: In the forehead?
Marietta: Yes.
Marcelles: Wrong. It’s always better to blow a hole through the back of the head, right through to the bridge of the nose. Lots of irreparable brain damage

…

Lula: You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt.[/b]

Lula is flitting from station to station on the radio…

[b]Radio announcer: …after her recent divorce, she shot her three children, aged seven, five and three.
Radio Announcer: …a judge praised defendant John Roy, but was dismayed to learn that he’d had sex with the corpse…
Lula: What?!
Radio announcer: State authorities, last October released 500 turtles into the Ganges, to try and reduce human pollution, and will now use crocodiles to eat the corpses dumped by poor Hindus…
Lula: Holy shit! It’s Night of the Living Dead!!!

…

Lula: Sailor Ripley, you get me some music on this radio right now! I mean it!

…

Girl in accident: What’s this sticky stuff in my hair?

…

Marietta: Buffalo hunting? ‘I’ve gone buffalo huntin’? What the fuck does that mean? Buffalo huntin’!

…

Bobby Peru: Speaking of Jack, One eyed Jack’s yearning to go a peeping in a seafood store!

…

Bobby Peru: I gotta take a piss bad, can I use your head?
Lula: Uh… yeah, I guess.
Bobby Peru: I don’t mean your head-head. I’m not gonna piss on your head, your hair and all, I’m just gonna piss in the toilet. Y’all take a listen, you’ll hear the deep sound comin’ down from Bobby Peru.[/b]

Bobby, you see, was a Marine.

[b]Bobby Peru: Ya know, I sure do like a girl with nice tits like yours who talks tough and looks like she can fuck like a bunny. Do you fuck like that? Cause if ya do, I’ll fuck ya good. Like a big ol’ jackrabbit bunny, jump all around that hole. Bobby Peru don’t come up for air.

…

Sailor: Yeah, that kinda money will get us a long way down the Yellow Brick Road.

…

Lula: This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top. I wish you’d sing me “Love me tender”. Oh, I wish I was somewhere over that rainbow. It’s just shit! Shit, shit, shit!

…

Bobby Peru: You’re next, fucker!

…

Bobby Peru [snorting gleefully]: Those are dummies, dummy!

…

Sailor: I’d like to apologize to you gentlemen for referring to you all as homosexuals. I also want to thank you fellas. You just taught me a valuable lesson in life.[/b]

[iambiguous]

As with Sailor and Lula above, there are folks who want to be like Lilly, Roy and Myra below. Anything but to be thought of as “a square”. They’re con artists…criminals. But they’re not exactly gangsters or thugs. Not like Bobo in other words.

And some of the folks they rip off are even less appealing.

There are so many different ways to be a part of the 1% they glamorize on TV and in, well, movies. Out there ripping off the rest of us—but with style, panache. Living by their wits.

This is what they call a “neo-noir” film. I never really did get what the hell that means. It’s a lot easier just to call movies things like great, good, okay, bad, terrible.

IMDb

[b]The short opening narration is done by Martin Scorsese.

The stock con Myra describes to Roy when they first meet is a variation on the “Wire” con used in The Sting.

John Cusack was a big fan of the book and tried to option the rights when he was still in high school.[/b]

wiki

[b]John Cusack had read Jim Thompson’s novel in 1985 and was so impressed by it that he wanted to turn the book into a film himself.When Cusack found out that Scorsese and Frears were planning an adaptation, he actively pursued a role in the project. Cusack has said that he saw the character of Roy Dillon as “a wonderfully twisted role to dive into.” To research his role, he studied with real grifters and learned card and dice tricks as well as sleight-of-hand tricks like the $20 switch that his character does in the film. He even successfully pulled off this trick at a bar on a bartender he knew well.

The shoot was emotionally challenging for Huston. After completing the final scene between Lilly and Roy, she was so drained from the experience that she ran from the set and the studio. It took her hours to recover. After shooting the scene where Bobo Justus tortures Lilly for information, Huston was so affected by the rough quality of the scene (which did not make the final cut of the film) that she spent that night throwing up.[/b]

THE GRIFTERS
Directed by Stephen Frears

[b]Myra: But they must be diamonds! They cut glass!
Jeweler: Glass will cut glass, Mrs. Langtry. Almost anything will.

…

Myra: I have only one thing now. Are you interested?
Jeweler: Well, I’d have to see it, of course.
Myra: You are seeing it. You’re looking right at it.
Jeweler: Mrs. Langtry, something like this very rarely happens. The fine setting and workmanship usually means precious stones. It always hurts me when I find they’re not. I always hope I’m mistaken

…

Mintz: You’re too young. You ought to be in school.
Roy: I am in school.

…

Mintz: Grifter’s got an irresistable urge to be the guy who’s wise. There’s nothing to whipping a fool. Hell, fools are made to be whipped. But to take another pro, even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you – that’s a score.

…

Mintz: You wanna learn a few tricks? I’ll teach you a few tricks. But your hand does not get into my pocket.
Roy: It’s a deal.

…

Mintz: All right, forget the long con. If the fool tips, you’re caught. You’ll do time. Never do time. And don’t go dressing like that.
Roy: Why?
Mintz: Showing off. Showing off! Hell, any blind man can spot you.

…

Roy: You smell good, Myra. Like a bitch in a hothouse.
Myra: Oh, darling! What a beautiful thing to say!

…

Doctor: Miss Dillon, I’m sorry about our little disagreement on the phone. And I’m really sorry about your son. Well, it’s hard to believe that such a strapping young man is your son.
Lilly: Never mind that, just take care of him.
Doctor: He’s had, he’s had an internal hemorrhage. He’s bleeding to death.
Lilly: Well, make it stop!
Doctor: His blood pressure’s under a hundred. I don’t think he’s going to make it to the hospital.
Lilly: You know who I work for.
Doctor: There’s just so much I can do.
Lilly: My son is going to be all right. If not, I’ll have you killed.

…

Myra: I’m Roy’s friend.
Lilly: Yes. I imagine you’re lots of people’s friend.

…

Myra: Down to the track?
Roy: La Jolla. Her job.
Myra [sensing there’s some of that in Roy]: I wanna know everything about you.

…

Myra: I’m a very practical little girl, and I don’t believe in giving any more than I get. And that may be pretty awkward for a match-book salesman or whatever you are.
Roy: Everybody needs matches.
Myra: What do you sell anyway?
Roy: Self-confidence.
Myra: God knows you have it to spare.

…

Roy: And what’s your objection to Myra?
Lilly: Same as anybody’s.

…

Lilly: You’re working some angle, and don’t tell me you’re not because I wrote the book!
Roy: What about you? You still handling playback money for the mob?
Lilly: THAT’s me. That’s who I am. You were never cut out for the rackets, Roy.
Roy: How come?
Lilly: You aren’t tough enough.
Roy: Not as tough as you, huh?

…

Lilly: How’d you get that punch in the stomach, Roy?
Roy: I tripped on a chair.

…

Lilly: Get off the grift, Roy.
Roy: Why?
Lilly: You haven’t got the stomach for it.

…

Roy: Carol, do you know why my mother hired you?
Carol: Uh, yes. I’ll come every afternoon and make sure you feel…
Roy: She hired you for me to fuck. To keep me away from bad influences.

…

Myra [lying naked in bed]: Can’t be done, Joe. All passangers must pay as they enter. No free passes or rebates. That’s a strict rule of the intercourse commerce comission.
Joe: Oh, God!
Myra: Only one choice to a customer: the lady, or the loot. What’s it gonna be?

…

Myra: [laughing while having sex with Joe]
Joe: What’re you laughing at?
Myra: Oh, nothing, nothing, no, never mind, Joe. It’s just…I was remembering, at lunch on the menu it said, “Today’s Special: broiled hothouse tomato under generous slice of ripe cheeeeese!”
[giggles]

…

Bobo: Troubador…How did you figure you were gonna get away with that?
Lilly: I’m not getting away with anything, Bobo.
Bobo: You’re fucking right! How much did your pals cut you in for on that nag, or did they give you the same kind of screwing you gave me?
Lilly: I was down on that horse, Bobo. Maybe not as much as I should’ve been. There was a lotta action…
Bobo: One question! You wanna stick to that story or you wanna keep your teeth?
Lilly: I wanna keep my teeth.

…

Bobo: What the fuck are you doing with a son?

…

Bobo: Ever hear about the oranges, Lilly?
Lilly: You mean the insurance scam?
Bobo [kicking a bag of oranges onto the floor]: Tell me about the oranges, Lilly, while you put those in the towel.
Lilly: You hit a person with the oranges wrapped up in a towel, they get big, ugly-looking bruises, but they don’t really get hurt, not if you do it right. It’s for working scams against insurance companies.
Bobo: And if you do it wrong?
Lilly: It can louse up your insides. You can get pe-pe-pe…
Bobo: What?
Littly: Per- per-permanent damage.
Bobo: You never shit right again.

…

Bobo: Okay, bring me the towel.

…

Roy: It’s great to get away, isn’t it? Take some time off. Next week, I’ll be back to work.
Myra: You already went back to work.
Roy: What?
Myra: I watched you, working the tat on those sailor boys.
Roy: Working the what?
Myra: Oh, come on, Roy, the tat. What you do for a living.
Roy: I’m a salesman.
Myra: You’re on the grift, same as me.
Roy: Myra, I’m not following you.
Myra: Roy, you’re a short-con operator…and a good one, I think. Don’t talk to me like I’m another square!

…

Roy: You talk the lingo. What’s your pitch?
Myra: The long end, big con.
Roy: Nobody does that single-o.
Myra: I was teamed ten years with the best in the business, Cole Langley.
Roy: I’ve heard the name.
Myra: It was beautiful! And getting better all the time.
Roy: Is that right?
Myra: It is, Roy. It’s where you should be. What do you bring in, $300, $400 a week? We used money like that for tips!

…

Myra: I’m the roper. I go out, find them, and bring them in.

…

Myra: Once they saw that money, they were hooked. And I made sure they saw it.

…

Myra: Cole was so crooked, he could eat soup with a corkscrew.

…

Myra: I’m still the best long-con roper you’ll ever see.
Roy: I bet you are, too. Now you’re trying to rope me.

…

Roy: It’s up to me. I’m strictly short con. It’s nothing but small time stuff. I can walk away from it anytime I want.
Lilly: Where have I heard that before?
Roy: Yeah, but I’m in control.
Lilly: Sure. You’re only 25 years old, already you can lay down four grand without even turning a hair. Grift’s like anything else, Roy. You don’t stand still. You either go up or down. Usually down, sooner or later.
Roy: Well, I’ll let it be a surprise, then.

…

Myra: Roy, I gotta have a partner. I looked and looked and believe me, brother I kissed a lotta fucking frogs!

…

Myra [hurt and confused]: What is it? What’s goin’ on? Why don’t you wanna team up?
Roy: The BEST reason I can think of is that you scare the hell out of me. I have seen women like you before, baby. You’re double-tough and you are sharp as a razor, and you get what you want or else; but you don’t make it work forever. Sooner or later the lightning hits, and I’m not gonna be around when it hits you.

…

Myra: My God, it’s your mother. It’s Lilly.
Roy: What?
Myra: Sure it is. That’s why you act so funny around each other.
Roy: What’s that?
Myra: Oh, don’t act so god-damned innocent!
[Myra is disgusted]
Myra: You and your own mother? Ugh! You like to go back where you been, huh?
Roy: Watch your mouth.
Myra: Yeah, I’m wise to you! I should have seen it before, you rotten son of a bitch. How is it, huh? How do you like it-
[Roy slaps her so hard that she falls to the floor]

…

Lilly: Roy…What if I told you I wasn’t really your mother? That we weren’t related? What? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Sure you would. You don’t have to tell me. Now, why would you like that, Roy?[/b]