philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

Shock radio or schlock radio? Bottom line: It wouldn’t exist at all if there were not millions upon millions of folks who thrive on it. They’re even willing to endure a gazillion commercials to tune in day in and day out.

Of course unlike the reactionaries that overpopulate talk radio today, Barry is somewhere [vaguely] on the liberal/left end of the political spectrum. When he’s not being entirely cynical…or even nihilistic.

So, is it exposing talk radio or just fanning the flames? Some will miss the irony altogether. And others will take it as literally as they take Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage. And who really knows how much irony is embedded in shows like theirs: cha ching.

Are there actually talk radio programs like this out there? I don’t know. It’s just a movie and hyperbole is built right into these things. But I surely did grow up around a lot of the callers.

On the other hand, the part about talk radio itself gets shunted aside as we bear witness to a man who is going off the rails. And we can only begin to guess if the program he airs is the engine or the caboose. Did it turn him into this monster or was the monster always there, looking for an outlet?

Based in part on the shooting of Alan Berg: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg

IMDb

Eric Bogosian’s play, on which the film is based, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Radio_(film

trailer: youtu.be/M5E9RV9TyEo

TALK RADIO [1988]
Directed by Oliver Stone

[b]Barry: The worst news of the night is that three out of four people in this country say they rather watch TV than have sex with their spouse. The second worst news is that some kids needed money for crack last night so you know what they did? They stuck a knife in the throat of an eighty year old grandmother down on Eulid Avenue. Right here in Dallas. One night, in one American city. Multiply that by hundreds of cities and what’ve you got: a country where culture means pornography and slasher films, where ethics mans payoffs, graft insider trading, where integrity means lying, whoring, intoxication. This country is in deep trouble, people! This country is rotten to the core and somebody better do something about it. I want you to take your hand out of the bowl of Fritos, throw away your National Inquirer, and pick up that phone - go ahead PICK IT UP! Hold it up to your face and dial 555-T-A-L-K. Open your mouth and tell 'em what we’re gonna do about the mess this country’s in. TALK RADIO, it’s the last neighborhood in town. People just don’t talk to each other anymore.

…

Barry [to caller]: When are we going to admit that drug prohibition is not working in this country? I think we should legalize all drugs, as sinister as that sounds.
Caller: That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Is it?
Barry: A junkie could go to a drugstore, sign his name, get the stuff for a buck…then he doesn’t have to rob or kill for his habit.
Caller: You cannot let children have drugs.
Barry: Why not? They’re gonna get it anyway. In America today we’re talking about shooting up in the eighth grade.
Caller: We have a moral obligation to the children.
Barry: Know what the most dangerous drug is?
Caller: It’s heroin.
Barry: No, it’s legal. It’s tobacco. It kills 350, 000 people a year. You know how much coke, crack, heroin, pot kill every year? Four thousand people. Will you listen to sense? Will you listen to logic, please? The only people who benefit from prohibition…are the gangsters makin’ the money on it, the politicians condemning it and gettin’ your vote. And who foots the bill? You, Rhonda Q Sucker!

…

Barry: Hello, Chet. Hello?
Chet: You think you’re so smart. Hello? Why are you always talkin’ about the drugs and niggers…and homos and Jews?
Barry: You know what I hate? I hate people who tell me what they don’t wanna talk about. You don’t wanna talk about blacks and gays, why’d you bring them up? Sounds like you like talking about them. Tell me what you wanna talk about, or get off the phone.

…

Barry: Last summer I visited Germany. Wanted to take a look at Hitler’s homeland. Are you familiar with Adolf Hitler, Chet?
Chet: I’m familiar with Adolf Hitler.
Barry: I bet you are. I decided to visit the remains of a concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich: Dachau. You join a tour group, go out by bus, get out at the gate. It’s chilling. A sign over the gate says, "Arbeit Macht Frei. " It means, “Work will make you free” - something the Nazis told their prisoners. I’m walking around this concentration camp, and I see something on the ground. I picked it up. Guess what I found, Chet? A tiny Star of David. Very old. Who knows? It might’ve belonged to one of the prisoners at the camp. Maybe a small boy torn from his parents…as they were dragged off to the slaughterhouse. I kept that Star of David. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. I keep it right here on my console. I like to hold it sometimes. In fact, well… I’m holding it right now. I like to hold it in my hand to give me courage. Maybe some of the courage that small boy had as he faced unspeakable evil…can enter me as I face the trials in my own life…as I face the cowardly and the narrow-minded. The bitter, bigoted people who hide behind anonymous phone calls…full of hatred and poisonous bile. The gutless, spineless people like you, Chet, who make me puke!

…

Chet: You think you’re so smart…You get the package I sent down to the station?
Barry: Package?
Chet: You got it, I know you did.

…

Barry [to Dan after Chet claims to have mailed him a bomb]: I hope you’re not calling the cops, because if you are, I’m going to get really pissed off! Get off the phone, or I walk. Don’t waste my time man. Hang it or I walk! Hang it up!

…

Barry: Remember, sticks and stones may break your bones but words can cause permanent damage!

…

Barry: I’m getting the 10:00 a.m. slot. He’s hiring a producer just for my own show.
Ellen: Oh, Barry, that’s wonderful. Yeah. You wanna do it?
Barry: Huh? You’d be the best person to do it. You’re smart, you’re hardworking, you do everything I tell you to do.
Ellen: Um, Barry, I think you better get someone else. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Barry: It’s a great idea. Come on. You gotta do it.
Ellen: Barry, if I work for you, the fun would go out it, you know? There’d be a lot of tension. It might even screw up our marriage.
Barry: Fuck our marriage. Come on. This is important. I need you. Don’t you want the show to be as good as it can be? Aren’t you behind me?
Ellen: You gotta be joking.
Barry: Of course I’m not joking.
Ellen: You just said, “Fuck our marriage.”
Barry: I’m joking.

…

Barry: Talk radio. Free speech isn’t really free at all. It’s actually a little bit like Russian roulette. A very expensive commodity. You never know what’s gonna come up the next time you push the button.

…

Barry: There’s nothing more boring than people who love you.

…

Dan: What you are, Barry, is a fuckin’ suit salesman with a big mouth. Let’s call a spade a spade. It’s a job. That’s all it is. You can come in here and start predicting Armageddon if you want to, Barry. But it’s still a job. A job you did not even know how to do…until I taught it to you! What do you think you’re doing in here, changing the world? This is a talk show, Barry, and you are a talk show host. Alan does the drive time, Jerry does the home handyman stuff, Sheila does the shrink stuff, Sid does the financial stuff, and you hang up on people. That’s your job. Now, you’re very good at it. You’re the joker in my deck, and I’m very happy for your success. But you work for me! I’m your boss. You wanna have the kid on the show? Have him on! But you get one thing straight. You fuck up my deal, and you go back to selling double-knit suits.

…

Barry: We have a very special guest with us tonight… Kent. Say hello to everybody, Kent.
Kent: Alright!
Barry: My sentiments exactly. We’ve brought Kent on board to get an inside look on the future of America. Kent is the classic American youth: energetic and resourceful, spoiled, perverse, and disturbed. Would you say that’s an accurate description, Kent?
Kent: Yup, sure!
Barry: Now what do you call that haircut?
Kent: I don’t know… Rock and roll!
Barry: …Are you high right now Kent?
Kent: Am I high?
Barry: Are you on drugs, or is this your naturally moronic self?
Barry [Kent leans over laughing hysterically]: Watch the drool, you’re getting all over the console.

…

Barry: Ralph Ralph Ralph Ralph Ralph…Tell me something I-I’m curious. How do you dial a phone with a straitjacket on?

…

Barry [to caller]: You’re right, I should hang. I’m a hypocrite. I ask for sincerity and I lie. I denounce the system as I embrace it. I want money and power and prestige: I want ratings and success. And I don’t give a damn about you, or the world. That’s the truth: for that I could say I’m sorry, but I won’t. Why should I? I mean who the hell are you anyways you…audience! You’re on me every night like a pack of wolves because you can’t stand facing what you are and what you’ve made! Yes the world is a terrible place, yes cancer and garbage disposals will get you. Yes the war is coming, yes the world is shot to hell and you’re all goners! Everything is screwed up and you like it that way don’t you! You’re fascinated by the gory details! You’re mesmerized by your own fear. You revel in floods, car accidents, unstoppable diseases, you’re happiest when others are in pain.That’s where I come in isn’t it? I’m here to lead you by the hand through the dark forest of your own hatred and anger and humiliation!

…

Barry [to audience]: I’m not afraid, see? I come in every night, I make my case, I say what I believe in! I tell you what you are, I have to I have no choice! You frighten me! I come in every night, I tear it to you, I abuse you, I insult you, you just keep coming back for more. What’s wrong with you? Why do you keep calling? I don’t want to hear anymore, STOP TALKING! GO AWAY! You’re a bunch of yellow-bellied, spineless, bigoted, quivering, drunken, insomniatic, paranoid, disgusting, perverted, voyeuristic, little obscene phone callers. That’s what you are.

…

[Barry is silent after delivering his tirade]
Stu: Sixty seconds left in the show, Barry.
[long pause, Barry still says nothing]
Stu: This is dead air, Barry. Dead air.
[another long pause]
Barry: I guess…we’re stuck with each other. This is Barry Champlain.
[Barry signs off]

…

Barry: Her best line was, “Barry Champlain is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

…

Stu: Barry and I worked together for over seven years and whenever you threatened him over the air, man he would stick it right back in your face. It was like his dick was flapping in the wind and he’d like to see if he could get an erection. The guy had a little dick but he liked to flap it out there. Then they cut it off, so now he’s dead. I don’t know if you understand my analogy but it’s the clearest one I can make.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Raise your hand if you have at least fantasized about doing something like this. You reach the point where the gap between those who own and operate the circus and those hired to be the clowns becomes more than you can bear. And you long ago concluded the workers of the world are never, ever going to unite.

So you decide to kill two birds with one stone: you smite the most powerful man in the world and you become a hero for the cause. Well, at least you are no longer nobody anymore.

His problem is he wants to make the system work for him [selling accouterments of the American Dream to others] but he is not very good at it. For example, he doesn’t feel comfortable lying to customers all the time…or ripping them off. That goes against his “values”. He is a man who staunchly believes the free enterprise system can be made concommitant with moral integrity.

Of course some will just dismiss him as an incompetent loser. He simply does not understand how capitalism works out in the real world. I mean, not at all.

But, as with Barry Champlain above, this guy has just as many problems in his personal life. He is spiralling downward both coming and going. The rage on one end keeps feeding the rage on the other end.

And thus all the political stuff about Nixon and the economy gets swallowed up here. However well-intentioned he might be, the guy is just pathetic at times. “He’s a fucking nut”, will be the general consensus.

IMDb

This was originally conceived as a fictitious story but, whilst doing research, the writers discovered something very similar had occurred, so decided to let that influence their script. It is loosely based on the life and death of Samuel Joseph Byck, who on 22 February 1974 attempted to hijack a Delta Air Lines DC-9 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, in order to crash it into the White House and kill President Richard Nixon.

Samuel Byck at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck

trailer: youtu.be/-BWl7poQ1Hk

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON [2004]
Written in part and directed by Niels Mueller

[b]Sam [voiceover]: My name is Sam Bicke, and I consider myself a grain of sand. On this beach called America there are 211 million grains of sand. Three billion on the beach we call Earth. If I am lucky, if I am lucky, the action that I am about to take…
[big smile]
Sam: …will show the powerful that even the least grain of sand has is him the power to destroy them.

…

Sam [voiceover]: Mr. Bernstein, sir, there are times I have felt alone on this planet. And that’s how they want us, isn’t it? Alone. Divided. Weak.

…

Jack: You wanna know who the greatest salesman in the world is?
[he points to a TV with Nixon giving a speech]
Jack: It’s that man, right there. He sold the whole country, 200 milion people on himself. Twice. And what was Nixon’s sales pitch in '68?
Sam: Well, in 68, it was…
Jack: He said he would end the war. He would get us out of Vietnam. And what did he do? He sent over another 100,000 troops and then he bombed the living shit out of them. That’s what he did. Now, what did Nixon run on last year? Ending the war in Vietnam. And he won. By a landslide. That is a salesman. He made a promise. He didn’t deliver. And then he sold us the same exact promise. All over again. That’s believing in yourself.

…

Sam [voiceover]: What happened, Mr. Bernstein…to the land of plenty. When there’s plenty for the few, and nothing for the plenty. Is that the American Dream?

…

Sam: Slavery never really ended in this country. They just gave it another name… Em-plo-yee.

…

Sam I saw you…the Panthers…on TV last night and I’m in complete agreement with your stand. Except that I’m white.
Harold: Yeah, well we all got to be born something.
Sam: Yes, but…but do you know what that means.
[Harold shakes his head]
Sam: It means you’re not getting to your whole audience. I mean I’m white but I’m in the same boat.
Harold: You own the boat.
Sam: No, I don’t own the boat. I’m not the man in the Cadillac.

…

Sam: I wanna throw an idea at you. Zebras.
Harold: Zebras?
Sam: Zebras. You see, they’re black, and they’re white. The Black Panthers become The Zebras, and membership will double.

…

Sam: But the government is looking for black business men.
Bonny: I been here 16 years and they ain’t found me yet.

…

Sam [voiceover watching Nixon on TV with the Shah of Itran]: Who are these men? Who are these men, maestro, who keep us waiting at their feet? The meek shall not inherit the earth. The earth belongs to the bullies who do not care how they get to the top, as long as they arrive. I am an honest man, and if that is to be my undoing then so be it…but I will not go quietly.

…

Sam [watching Nixon on TV explaining he is not a crook]: It’s about money, Dick. It’s about money, Dick! IT’S ABOUT MONEY! IT’S ABOUT MON-EY, DICK!! IT’S ABOUT MONEY DICK!!! MONEY!!!

…

Sam [voiceover]: Please let them know, maestro. Let them know I was nervous… that unlike the powerful I was not so arrogant, as to be sure that my actions were righteous. Certainty is the disease of kings, maestro… and Sam Bicke was many things, but not a king. He just wanted to make a change, to stop the lies… and he aimed high.

…

Sam: [desperately upset, to Julius]: I’m just, I’m trying to keep my family together… and that little guy can’t do it anymore, he just can’t do it anymore. Because there’s is, there’s a cancer… in the system, the whole system has a cancer and I’m being punished because I resist. But somebody has to resist, just somebody has to resist.

…

Sam [voiceover]: If history teaches us anything it’s that you have got to get the seat of government. The whole goddamned chair, you just kick it out. Let the system dangle till it doesn’t breathe.

…

Sam [voiceover]: Mr. Bernstein, sir there are people who sit and wait their lives away on the promise of the dream that will not come…they are the sheep.

…

Sam [voiceover]: They can rebuild the White House, but they will never forget me. Not ever.[/b]

Do you remember him?

[iambiguous]

Franz Kafka, allow me to introduce you to Dirty Harry.

If cops treat folks from the working class a bit differently from those higher up imagine how they treat a suspect who is “on the dole”?

Now, this is Australia, so maybe the traditions down there are just…different?

The thing here though is that the cops themselves inhabit the hierarchy from hell. They sometimes treat their subbordinates worse than the suspects. They all have their own [at times conflicting] agendas.

But is this really all just about a stolen car? Or perhaps it’s something more…like a serial killer. What makes it particularly delicious though is that at first the cops here don’t realize that the interview itself is under investigation by the folks in IA.

It’s a fascinating cat and mouse game from beginning to end.

trailer: youtu.be/TTBAe6885us

THE INTERVIEW [1998]
Written and directed by Craig Monahan

[b]Eddie [to detective]: You try losing your job, your livelihood and your family and see jow many friends you have.

…

Det. Prior: It’s about a fucking stolen fucking car you fucking fuckwit.

…

Eddie: Just goes to show you how the mind works, doesn’t it?
Det. Steele: I don’t know Mr. Fleming. How does the mind work?

…

Chief Inspector: If you have a problem Mr Fleming I wish for you to state it now.
Eddie: I wish you had come in hours ago. They broke into my house 5 o’clock this morning, bashed me, brought me here. I’ve been trying to help where I can but they wouldn’t listen.
Chief Inspector: What do you mean?
Eddie: All this business about a stolen car. As I already told these gentlemen I knew nothing about it. Stolen car or this mysterious business about this Mr. Bancroft that seems to be missing.
Det. Steele: You confessed to six murders including that of Mr Bancroft.
Chief Inspector: What do you say to that Mr. Flemming?
Eddie: Dectective, you know as well as I do that I only told you what you wanted to hear. You said you wanted to be convinced.
Chief Inspector: What do you mean?
Eddie: These policemen have kept me here all day. I concocted a story based on the information they told me. I even told them I would draw them a map just to get a meal because the only way I would get a meal and be allowed to eat it was to tell them what they wanted to hear. They lapped it up, couldn’t get enough of it.
Chief Inspector: Are you telling me the confession you made about the stolen car, killing Mr Bancroft and all the others was a story you made up just to get a meal?[/b]

Yep. Or maybe, uh, nope?

[b]Chief Inspector: I hear what you’re telling me Flemming. But you lied before. How do I know you’re not lying now?

…

Chief Inspector: AI has had you under video surveillance since you first walked into that room this morning.
Det. Prior: You’re fucking joking!
Chief Inspector: From what they say your whole interview was inadmissable.

…

Det. Steele [to the chief inspector] : You asshole. You’ve rigged this upstairs haven’t you? I’m here to get results. To make you look good. All you do is tie me hands. You lie, you cheat, you leak information. You’re a fucking disgrace. You’re supposed to be one of us. You make me sick.

…

Det. Steele [to the chief inspector]: I’ve gone from Lord Mayor to shit-carter in less than two hours.[/b]

And then [inevitably]:

AI Inspector: I know what’s going on in the interview room. And I know what’s been going on in your head.
Det. Steele: When was the last time you worked on the streets? Do you have any idea what it’s like out there? You fight fire with fire.

The end of the film is meant to bear that out: the look on Eddie’s face. It’s like Verbal Kint losing the limp.

[iambiguous]

I guess you had to be around back then. And I was. But not within range of this crowd. There’s not a single character here I can identitfy with. The sex industry? No thanks.

But on this side of the gender divide I am in the distinct minority. And back then pornography was not like it is today. No internet, for example. It was considerably more difficult to engage it in the privacy of your own home. They still made “movies” that men paid to see in “adult theatres”.

It was still construed by “normal people” to be a sleazy cesspool of drug-addled degenerates. At least by the ones who weren’t secretly indulging in it on the side.

But these guys didn’t care. They lived in their own little world where sex was way, way out in the open and they understood just how lucrative wrapping a business model around it could be. At least for the executives. And the “stars”. Only aren’t the stars in this business usually the women?

But these guys reacted to making these movies as though nominations for Academy Awards were at stake.

IMDb

Burt Reynolds said in a Maxim magazine interview that when he researched his role by visiting porn sets and talking with real porn actors, and that experience made him want to wear rubber gloves and take a shower afterwards.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie_Nights

trailer: youtu.be/pkkcvtrIUSg

[b]Note: some explicit dialogue[/b]

BOOGIE NIGHTS [1997]
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

[b]Eddie: [standing in the kitchen at work with Jack]: So, you want five or ten?
Jack: What?
Eddie: Well, if you just wanna see me jack off, it’s ten. But if you just wanna look at it, it’s only five.

…

Jack [to Eddie]: I got a feeling beneath those jeans…there’s something wonderful just waiting to get out.

…

Jerry: What the fuck was that? With that country-western shit, no one’s going to buy a stereo. What kind of brother are you, listening to that shit?
Buck: Look, Jerry…
Jerry: I gave you a job here because I thought your acting stuff might bring some nice pussy into the place…and it has…but I can’t have any more fuckups. You dig?
Buck: Yeah
Jerry: You dig?
Buck: Yeah, I dig.

…

Jack [to Eddie]: It is my dream, it is my goal…it is my idea to make a film that the story sucks them in…and when they spurt out that joy juice they just got to sit in it. They can’t move until they find out how the story ends. I want to make a film like that.

…

Eddie: Aren’t you gonna take your skates off?
Rollergirl: I never take my skates off.

…

Kurt: What’s wrong?
Little Bill: My fucking wife. She’s down there, some idiot’s dick in her. Everybody’s standing around watching. It’s a fucking embarrassment!

…

Little Bill: Can we talk about this later?
Kurt: Oh, yeah. You got to go somewhere? I was hoping for the shoot tomorrow… we could send Rocky down, and he could pick it up.
Little Bill: Look, Kurt, my wife has an ass in her cock in the drive way, all right? I’m sorry if my thoughts are not on the photography of the film we’re shooting tomorrow!

…

Colonel: I’m looking forward to seeing you in action. Jack says you’ve got a great big cock.
Eddie: Well, I don’t know, I guess so.
Colonel: May I see it?
Eddie: Really?
Colonel: Please!
[stares as Eddie lowers his shorts]
Colonel: Thank you, Eddie!
Eddie: No problem.
[the Colonel continue to stare as Eddie walks away]

…

Reed [to Eddie]: Want to hear a poem I wrote? “I love you, you love me. Going down the sugar tree. We’ll go down the sugar tree, and see lots of bees: playing, playing. But the bees won’t sting, because you love me.” That’s it.

…

Eddie: Jack, I was thinking about my name, y’know?
Jack: Yeah?
Eddie: I was wondering if you had any ideas.
Jack: I’ve got a few, but you tell me.
Eddie: Well, my idea was, y’know, I want a name, I want it so it can cut glass, y’know, razor sharp.
Jack: Tell me.
Eddie: When I close my eyes, I see this thing, a sign, I see this name in bright blue neon lights with a purple outline. And this name is so bright and so sharp that the sign - it just blows up because the name is so powerful…It says, “Dirk Diggler.”

…

Little Bill: The setup is…Here we go. One, Amber talking to Becky. They make the telephone call to the agents to send over some actors. Two, enter Reed to audition for Amber. They go at it. Becky watches. Three, Becky goes to the bathroom to jack off. She gets interrupted by Amber. They go at it. Four…Who’s Dirk Diggler?
Jack: That’s that new boy, good-looking kid…Eddie at the club.
Kurt: Good name. Anyway, enter Dirk. He meets Becky. They go at it.

…

Dirk [to Jack]: I can do it again if you need a close-up.

…

Jack [to Kurt]: You know this is the film I want them to remember me by.

…

Floyd: Let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk about what it really means to this industry and let’s talk about how all of us, not one of us…how all of us are going to profit. Now, I’ve been doing theater in San Francisco, San Diego about as long as you’ve been doing stag and hard core. Jack: We’re all familiar with your biography, Floyd.
Colonel: No one doubts your credentials or your history.
Floyd: Then why the resistance? This industry is going to be turned upside down soon enough. The Colonel’s got the money. You got the talent. I got the connections to the equipment and the mail-order distribution…not to mention those kids out there who are hot fuck action to the max, Jack. This is the future. Videotape tells the truth.
Jack: Wait a minute. You come into my house, my party to tell me about the future? That the future is tape… videotape… and not film? It’s amateurs and not professionals? I’m a filmmaker. That’s why I will never make a movie on videotape. I’ll tell you something else. I will never, ever loan out any of the actors that I have under contract.
Floyd: Wait, Jack. I’m not a complicated man. I like cinema. In particular, I like to see people fucking on film…but I don’t want to win an Oscar…and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. I like simple pleasures like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. That’s just me. That’s just something that I enjoy. Call me crazy, call me a pervert…but there’s one little thing I want to do in this life… and that is to make a dollar and a cent in this business…Film is just too damn expensive and the theaters are already converting to video projectors.

…

Dirk [to Amber who is making a “documentary” on him]: I think that’s…that’s…part of my reason for doing this, you know. I’ve gotten thousands upon thousands of letters, you know, from people telling me…“God, you’ve taught me this… and you’ve made our love life so much better.” And this isn’t go out and have sex with million people and how to get a girl off. It’s about how to get your wife off. If only people could have been doing this before we could have saved a million relationships. I’ve saved thousands.

…

Dirk [to Amber]: What can you expect when you’re on top? You know? It’s like Napoleon. When he was the king, you know, people were just constantly trying to conquer him, you know, in the Roman Empire. So, it’s history repeating itself all over again.

…

Amber [from her “documentary”]: “For Dirk Diggler the future is something to look forward to, not to fear. He is a creative man of many interests—film, poetry, karate, music, and dance. He is a man of passion and mystery. He is a man of lust.”

…

Jack: All right, she was 15 but you thought she was older. You didn’t do anything. She was just at your place. You didn’t do anything, right?
Colonel: Right. Nothing.
Jack: You didn’t do anything to her?
Colonel: Not a thing. You know me, Jack. I didn’t do a thing.
Jack: You didn’t do anything?
Colonel: I didn’t do anything. But they…they found something else…
Jack: What?
Colonel: Well… Jack, it’s just…it’s my fucking weakness. They’re so small and they’re so cute and they’re so adorable. I just can’t help it when…
Jack: Ah, Jesus.

…

Dirk: Look, man, all we need is the tapes, all right?
Record Producer: No, you don’t get the tapes until you’ve paid.
Dirk: In our situation, that doesn’t make any fucking sense.
Reed: Look, we can not pay for the tapes, unless we take the tapes to the record company, and get paid.
Dirk: Exactly!
Record Producer: That’s not an MP, that’s a YP, your problem. Come up with the money, or forget it.
Reed: Okay, now you’re talking above my head. I don’t know all of this industry jargon, YP, MP. All I know is that I can’t get a record contract, we cannot get a record contract unless we take those tapes to the record company. And granted, the tapes themselves are a uh um oh, you own them, all right, but the magic that is on those tapes. That fucking heart and soul that we put onto those tapes, that is ours and you don’t own that. Now I need to take that magic and get it over the record company. And they’re waiting for us, we were supposed to be there a half hour ago. We look like assholes, man.
Dirk: Let me explain to him in simple arithmetic. One, two three! Because you don’t fuckin’ get it, Burt! You give us the tapes. We get the record contract. We come back and give you your fuckin’ money. Have you heard the tapes? Have you even heard them? We’re guaranteed a record deal. Our stuff is that good!
Record Producer: Now I get it. Now I understand. You want it to happen…but it’s not going to happen. Because it’s a Catch-22.
Dirk: What the fuck does that mean? What is a Catch-22, Burt?
Record Producer: Catch-22, gentleman. Think about it.
[pause]
Dirk [goes into karate man mode]: You know what I’m thinking about, man? I’m thinking about kicking some fuckin’ ass! [/b]

The magic? It’s shit.

[b]Loan officer: Mr. Swope, we can’t help you.
Buck: I have all the papers, though. Everything’s in order, yes?
Loan officer: Yes, but we can’t give you a loan. I’m sorry.
Buck: Why? I don’t understand. Why can’t you give me the loan?
Loan Officer: Mr. Swope, you’re a pornographer. This financial institution cannot endorse pornography.
Buck: I’m not a pornographer. I’m an actor. Why are you doing this to me? I am an actor. I am an actor.

…

Jack: You’ve got to make it a little more sexy. Don’t just ram it in there like that, this is not a hole in the wall pal, it’s Rollergirl.

…

Rahad: That’s Cosmo. He’s Chinese.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Not exactly the way Dagney Taggert approached trains. He loved them for other reasons. But, for a time, sold them just the same. The “toy” kind. But then his employer [and only friend] dies and everything changes. It seems there’s a whole other train out there.

For whatever reason he is a loner. He just wants to be left alone. Tell that to Joe, though. Or Olivia [when she’s driving].

Joe’s what some would call friendly, but what I would call officious. Or “loud” as Olivia prefers. And Olivia has a lot of pain she is trying to come to grips with. With her perhaps he has met his match.

Somehow the three of them are able to form a…what exactly? Good question.

I don’t think in a million years I could really explain why I love this film so much.

IMDb

Such were the budgetary constraints on this 20-day shoot, Patricia Clarkson’s modified trailer - a windowless contraption - had originally been used for transporting horses.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_Agent

trailer: youtu.be/nTGUP0JK1cU

THE STATION AGENT [2003]
Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

[b]Kid [laughing at Finbar as he walks down the sidewalk]: Hey, buddy, where’s Snow White?
Kid: Grumpy, right?

…

Lawyer: I brought you down here to discuss your inheritance. In his will, Henry bequeathed to you some property in Newfoundland, New Jersey. It’s about half an acre of land. And it’s got an old train depot on it.

…

Joe: Oh, hey, did you hear? Someone moved into the depot.
Olivia: Oh, that’s great.
Joe: Yeah. He’s an interesting guy. Actually, he’s a little guy.
Olivia: Shit…

…

Olivia [to Finbar]: You’re safe. No car.

…

Olivia: You don’t have a phone?
Finbar: No.
Olivia: I love that. I hate phones. I have two. Never answer either of them.

…

Olivia [to Fin]: My son Sam died. Two years ago.
[pause]
Olivia: Would you mind not looking at me right now?

…

Joe: Fin, let me ask you a question. Do they have clubs for you people?
Finbar: What do you mean?
Joe: You know, like a “train of the month” club.

…

Finbar: Well, there are people called train chasers. They follow a train and they film it.
Olivia: Are you a train chaser?
Finbar: No.
Olivia: How come?
Finbar: I don’t know how to drive a car. And I don’t own a camera.
Olivia: That’d do it.

…

Finbar: You said you weren’t going to talk to me if I sat here, Joe.
Joe: I haven’t said anything in like twenty minutes.
[Fin checks his pocket watch]
Finbar: Nine.
Joe: You timed me?
Finbar: Mm-hmm.
Joe: That’s cold, bro.

…

Olivia: How about you? What made you pick Newfoundland?
Finbar [smiling mischievously]: I wanted to live near Joe.

…

Olivia: Have you ever been in love, Fin?
Finbar: Yeah.
Olivia: What happened?
Finbar: I was young…and, uh…really angry.
Olivia: About what?
Finbar: Um…Being a dwarf. You know, it’s, uh…It’s really funny how different people see me and treat me. Because I’m actually just a very simple, boring person.

…

Joe: Hey, man, let me ask you a personal question. You’ve had sex before, right?
Finbar: Yes.
Joe: With a regular sized chick?
Finbar: With a regular sized chick.
Joe: You ever had it with someone your own size?
Finbar: No.
Joe: Do you wanna?
Finbar: I really don’t want to talk about this, Joe.

…

Finbar: I’m retired, actually.
Emily: Aren’t you a little young to be retired?
Finbar: No, dwarves retire early. Common fact.
Emily: Yeah, lazy dwarves.

…

Finbar: Are you okay?
Olivia: I don’t want you here, Fin. Go away.
Finbar: Please, Olivia, just…
Olivia: Look…I’m not your fucking girlfriend or your mother, all right?
Finbar: I know that. Are you all right?
Olivia: You’re not a child! Get off the fucking porch, and leave me alone!

…

Joe: It’s the librarian fantasy, man. Glasses off, hair down, books flying.
Finbar: She doesn’t wear glasses.
Olivia: Well, buy her some.[/b]

[iambiguous]

A particularly strange true story.

At the beginning of the film we see her hunched over a basket of cleaning implements; she is scrubbing the floor while her employer tacks yet another chore on to her list of tasks. She’s a maid…a housekeeper. In her own way [I suppose] she was another Henry Darger.

It might be said she embodied two aspects of religiosity that propelled her artistic impulses: ecstasy and mental affliction.

And just her luck: One of her employers was a German art critic.

Here’s the thing though: He liked her painting. He was an art critic. Does that make them good? They are striking though. At least I thought so.

She also made her own paints.

Then there is WWI…and being a “boche”. And always the real world where art and money sometimes cohere but most times do not. Not until after you die. Or [in this case] after you are put in an insane asylum.

IMDb

Since the film’s release, the number of visitors at the museum of Senlis exhibiting Séraphine’s works has quadrupled (August 2009).

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9raphine_(film

Seraphine Louis at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9raphine_Louis

examples of her work: google.com/search?q=seraphin … 93&bih=453

trailer: youtu.be/_P9DTiupX6k

SERAPHINE [2008]
Written in part and directed by Martin Provost

[b]Mother Superior: I’m glad to see you are doing so well. Are you lacking for anything.
Seraphine: Time, Mother Superior. Cleaning takes it all.
Mother Superior [patting her on the head]: And in there? Is everything better?

…

Employer [appraising a painting she asked Seraphine to bring her]: Shall I tell you what I think? You’re wasting your time. These apples are anything but apples. They could just as easily be plums or peaches. Go back to your cleaning. You have better things to do.

…

Wilhelm: Who painted this?
Mme Duphot: That? I forget.
Wilhelm: Tell me who painted this.
Mme Duphot: Seraphine.
Wilhelm: What do you mean?
Mme Duphot: Your…I mean, our cleaner. She worked at the convent. One day, her guardian angel commanded her to paint.
[snickers from all the other dinner guests]
Mme Duphot: My son insisted I keep hold of it.
Wilhelm: I’ll buy it off you.

…

Wilhelm [to Seraphine]: Do you have others? I want to see them immediately.

…

Wilhelm: You can’t spend your life cleaning when you have gold in your hands.
Seraphine: “Be ardent in your work and you will find God in your cooking pots,” said Saint Teresa of Avila.
Wilhelm: I’m not very religious, you know.
Seraphine: But the Virgin Mary? Sir believes in the Virgin Mary, at least?
Wilhelm: It depends.
Seraphine: It depends on what?
Wilhem: On how I am feeling. But I believe in the soul. Definitely. I believe that we humans have a soul. It’s what makes us so sad, compared to animals. Animals are never sad, are they?
Seraphine: Yes, they are. If you take her calf from a cow, she cries.

…

Wilhem: Seraphine, now I am going to tell you what I think. You’re talented. But you will have to work very hard. Don’t worry about what other people say. They know nothing.

…

Seraphine [to Wilhelm]: Sir thinks someone of my rank isn’t able to understand things as well as him.
Wilhelm: Not at all. Not at all.
Seraphine: Lies!
Wilhelm: Don’t talk to me like that!
Seraphine: How do you think people talk to me, ever since I was born?

…

Madame Delonges: Your flowers are strange. They move. They look like insects. They look like eyes, wounded eyes. Shredded flesh. Terrifying things.
Seraphine: Me, too. When I look at them, what I’ve done scares me.

…

Title card: Seraphine died in 1942 in Clermont Asylum. Thanks to Uhde, her work was exhibited 3 years later in Paris and worldwide. She is known today as Serpahine de Senlis.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This guy is so despicable he attends the funerals of complete strangers only in order to pass out his business card. And his business is being a sleazy lawyer.

But it’s not as bad as it looks. He was once a respectable [and respected] attorney. But then some sons of bitches shafted him. Now he gets by on crumbs and booze.

So what are the odds then that he can take on the medical establishment, the legal establishment and the Roman Catholic Church?

Well, what’s the script say?

Money and power. That’s always being exposed again and again in films like this. We know we’re being suckered into going along but we let them do it to us anyway. Vicarious truth and justice is better than nothing at all.

The world isn’t always like this of course. But it is often enough to propel cynics like me into the future.

And I’m always a sucker for a film where a cynical, corrupt scumbag gets drawn into a set of circumstances that completely turns him [or her] around. But there are consequences.

Look for Bruce Willis. He’s supposed to be in here [uncredited] but I never spot him. Same with Tobin Bell.

trailer: youtu.be/F3aJ3MGghXA

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Verdict

The Verdict [1982]
Directed by Sidney Lumet

[b]Mickey [to Frank]: Listen to me. Listen to me… listen to me, Frank, ‘cause I’m done fuckin’ with you. I can’t do it any more. Look around you: You think that you’re going to change? What’s going to change it? You think it’s going to be different next month? It’s going to be the same. And I have to stop. This is it. I got you a good case, it’s a moneymaker. You do it right and it will take care of you. But I’m through. I’m sorry, Frank, this is the end. Life is too fucking short, and I’m getting too fucking old.

…

Dr. Gruber: Her doctors murdered her. They gave her the wrong anesthetic and they put her in the hospital for life. Her doctors killed her. She ended up drowning in her own vomit.
Galvin: Do you know who her doctors were?
Dr. Gruber: I read the file. Yeah. Marx and Towler. I know who they were.
Galvin: The most respected…
Dr. Gruber: Whose side are you arguing…? I thought that you wanted to do something. I don’t have any interest in the woman’s estate. I have an interest in the Hospital; and I don’t want those bozos working in the same shop as me. They gave her the wrong anesthetic. They turned the girl into a vegetable. They killed her and they killed her kid. You caught 'em.

…

Galvin: Uh, why, why are you doing this?
Dr. Gruber: To do the right thing. Isn’t that why you’re doing it?[/b]

Uh, guess who gets bought off?

[b]Galvin: How did you settle on the amount?
Bishop Brophy: We thought it was just.
Galvin: You thought it was just?
Bishop Brophy: Yes.
Galvin: Because it struck me, um, how neatly ‘three’ went into this figure: 210,000. That means I would keep seventy.
Bishop Brophy: That was our insurance company’s recommendation.
Galvin: Yes, that would be.
Bishop Brophy: Nothing we can do can make that woman well.
Galvin: And no one will know the truth.
Bishop Brophy: What is the truth?
Galvin: That poor girl put her trust into the…into the hands of two men who took her life. She’s in a coma. Her life is gone. She has no home, no family. She’s tied to a machine. She has no friends. And the people who should care for her - her doctors… and you and me - have been bought off to look the other way. We’ve been paid to look the other way. I came here to take your money. I brought snapshots to show you so I could get your money. I can’t do it; I can’t take it. 'Cause if I take the money I’m lost. I’ll just be a…a rich ambulance chaser. I can’t do it. I can’t take it.

…

Galvin: I’m going to help her.
Mickey: To do what…? To do what, for chrissake…? To help her to do what? She’s dead…
Galvin: They killed her. And they’re trying to buy it…
Mickey: That’s the fucking point, dummy. Let them buy it. We let them buy the case. That’s what I took it for. You let this drop – we’ll go up to New Hampshire, kill some fuckin’ deer…
Galvin: I can win this case.
Mickey: You won, Frankie. You won. When they give you the money, that means you won.

…

Mickey: Do you know who the attorney for the Archdiocese is? Ed Concannon!
Galvin: He’s a good man…
Mickey: He’s a good man? Heh, heh, he’s the Prince of fucking Darkness! He’ll have people testifying they saw her waterskiing in Marblehead last summer. Now look, Frank, don’t fuck with this case!

…

Judge: Frank, what will you and your client take right now this very minute to walk out of here and let this damn thing drop?
Galvin: My client can’t walk, your Honor.

…

Judge: It seems to me, a fellow’s trying to come back, he’d take the settlement, get a record for himself. I, myself, would take it and run like a thief.
Galvin: I’m sure you would.

…

Galvin: I swear to you I wouldn’t have turned the offer down unless I thought that I could win the case…
Doneghy: What you thought!? What you thought…I’m a workingman, I’m trying to get my wife out of town, we hired you, we’re paying you, I got to find out from the other side they offered two hundred…
Galvin: I’m going to win this case Mr. Doneghy… I’m going to the Jury with a solid case, a famous doctor as an expert witness, and I’m going to win five or six times what they…
Doneghy: You guys… you guys are all the same! The doctors at the hospital, you…it’s always what I’m going to do for you. And then you screw up, and it’s, “Ah, we did the best that we could, I’m dreadfully sorry.” And people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.

…

Mickey [to Laura]: Stearns thought Frankie needed some help, so they bribed a juror. So Frankie finds out. He comes to me in tears. He thinks that anybody who knows what a ‘spinnaker’ is got to be a saint. I told him ‘Frankie, wake up. These people are sharks. What do you think they got so rich from? Doing good?’ He can’t be comforted. He tells the boys at Stearns and Harrington they’ve disappointed him, he’s going to the Judge to rat them out. But they were way ahead of him. Before he can get there here comes this Federal Marshal, and Frankie’s indicted for Jury tampering, they throw him in jail, he’s gonna be disbarred, his life is over.

…

Mickey [to Laura]: Okay, so now he’s in jail. He, finally, he gets to see the light, he calls up Harrington, he says he thinks he made a mistake. As if by magic, just like that, charges against him are dropped, he’s released from jail. He’s fired from the firm, his wife divorces him, he turns to drink and mopes around three and a half years. You like that story, Laura?

…

Nurse Rooney: You know you guys are all the same. You don’t care who gets hurt. You’d do anything for a dollar. You’re a bunch of whores. You got no loyalty…No nothing…You’re a bunch of whores!

…

Young Lawyer: …and he’s black.
Concannon [sternly): I’m going to tell you how you handle the fact that he’s black. You don’t touch it. You don’t mention it. You treat him like anybody else. Neither better or worse. And, uh, let’s get a black lawyer to sit at our table. Okay…?

…

Mickey [to Frank]: All we have is the witch doctor, right?

…

Concannon [to Laura]: I know how you feel. You don’t believe me, but I do know. I’m going to tell you something that I learned when I was your age. I’d prepared a case and old man White said to me, “How did you do?” And, uh, I said, “Did my best.” And he said, “You’re not paid to do your best. You’re paid to win.” And that’s what pays for this office…pays for the pro bono work that we do for the poor…pays for the type of law that you want to practice…pays for my whiskey… pays for your clothes…pays for the leisure we have to sit back and discuss philosophy as we’re doing tonight. We’re paid to win the case. You finished your marriage. You wanted to come back and practice the law. You wanted to come back to the world. Welcome back.

…

Mickey: The ‘History’…?
Galvin: Yeah, how old are you, how many children do you have…
[he stops, handing Mickey the admitting form…then he leaves the office]
Mickey [reading from the form]: How old are you, how many children do you have…when did you last eat.

…

Laura [looking up at men holding Frank back after he punched her in the face]: Leave him alone.

…

Galvin: If she had eaten, say one hour prior to admission, the inducement of a general anesthetic…the type you gave her…would have been negligent?
Dr. Towler: Negligent. Yes…it would have been criminal. But that was not the case.
Galvin: Thank you.

…

Kaitlin [testifying why she kept a copy of the admittance form]: After the operation, when that poor girl she went into a coma, Dr. Towler called me in. He told me that he’d had five difficult deliveries in a row and he was tired…and he never looked at the admittance form. And he told me to change the form. He told me to change the ‘1’ to a ‘9’…or else…or else he said, he said he’d fire me. He said I’d never work again. Who were these men? Who were these men? I wanted to be a nurse!

…

Galvin: You know, so much of the time we’re just lost. We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.” And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead. We think of ourselves as victims…and we become victims. We become…we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You are the law. Not some book…not the lawyers…not the, a marble statue…or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are…they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, “Act as if ye had faith… and faith will be given to you.” If…if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

…

Judge: Have you reached a verdict?
Jury Foreman: We have, your Honor. Your Honor, we have agreed to hold for the Plaintiff. But your honor, are we limited on the size of the award? What I mean. sir, are we permitted to award an amount greater than the amount the plaintiff asked for?[/b]

[iambiguous]

I’ve always been drawn to films set in small towns. In part because I spent a good part of my own youth growing up in one. And in part because everywhere I went, one way or another, there was God. And all the things which made that inevitable.

The guy just got out of prison. And boy is he ever on his best behavior. But you know right from the start where this is going. To the part where you can’t help but wonder: If God does exist where does He fit in here? Especially as the guy found God in prison.

Of course some folks think: Why should we give a fuck about them anyway? They are all just hicks from the sticks trudging from day to day in the strait jacket of their own prattle and prejudice. Only aren’t we all in our own way. Give or take the part about God. And the particular narritive we cling to as “reality”.

Of course nothing changes. God goes on. People will just chalk it up to a misguided soul who didn’t get Him the way we are supposed to.

trailer: youtu.be/70vi19LiKR8

EYE OF GOD [1997]
Written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson

[b]Sheriff [voiceover]: Sunday evenings, my dad read to us from the Bible. The stories were beautiful, austere, terrifying. And one loomed over all the others–the story of Abraham. God sends a man to slaughter his own son, only to stop him perilously close to the act, to reveal it’s all been a ruse. To me that story was, and always will be, not Abraham’s story, but Isaac’s. This boy must grow with the image of his own father poised above him without it ever explained why he’s a victum. I always knew I would devote my life to clarity. I would save the world’s uncomprehending victums. What I never knew is, when dealing with matters of life and death, as policemen inevitably do, there’s no way around the question of God. In fact, there are moments when there’s nothing else that can be thought of but, why? And like Isaac found there’s only silence in response. Lonely, indeterminate silence.

…

Parole officer: So you found religion too?
Jack: Yes, sir.
Parole officer: That’s neither one way or the other with me, religion. If Christ died for my sins, I sure as hell ain’t seen any of the benefits. But if you get satisfaction in praying, so be it.

…

Jack: I need to know where the church is in town.
Parole officer: That should be easy enough. Just pick and choose. Unless you’re a Morman or a Jew.

…

Tom: Who’s that lady?

…

Ainsley: I don’t think I believe in God.
Jack: That’s all right.
Ainsley: It is?
Jack: You just ain’t found Him yet. He’s in your life, you just can’t see Him.
Ainsley: Don’t nobody see God.
Jack: But we see what He does. That’s what faith is.
Ainsley: How do I get faith?
Jack: You just got to let go.

…

Ainsley [to Tommy]: I think I might have left my husband tonight.

…

Parole Officer: The state feels that Jack is rehabilitated…but they always say the spouse has a right to know.
Ainsley: What did he do?
Parole Officer: He nearly beat a woman to death and, uh…
Ainsley: And what?
Parole Officer: And, uh, she was carrying their child at the time.

…

Sheriff: “Revelation.”
Jack: You’ve read the Bible. It’s more than most Christians.
Sheriff: Your parole officer is right. If this goes to trial, we’ll win. You’ll get the chair. I want that. I want your life to end. I used to think a man’s life was God’s domain. But you’ve changed that.

…

Sheriff: This got nothing to do with God.
Jack: Everything’s got to do with God. It’s that you and this whole world’s forgot.
Sheriff: Was God with you on Friday night?
Jack: You don’t believe that?
Seriff: I don’t see why he’d let that happen to one of His children.
Jack: God ain’t about asking why.
Seriff: You never ask why?
Jack: Even if I did, think I’d hear an answer?

…

Sheriff [voiceover]: Faith. God tells a man to sacrifice his own son. The man has faith, and he will do it. He doesn’t ask why. Maybe Abraham, as he binds his son, knows why they are there. I don’t anymore.

…

Ainsley [to Tom]: Children. That’s all we are, Lord, if you’re out there at all. Your children, boys and girls. Forgive us. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Another small town, another love story. And boy do I know a thing or two about falling in love there.

But you never forget the first time you bump into someone actually worth falling in love with. Someone who finally makes you understand there is more to the world than the town you had always mistaken for the world. And the last thing you come to care about then is that she’s your friend’s sister.

This brought back so many memories for me. The gap between a mind at that age and the complexity of the world as it really is. And it’s all the wider back then because you are so sure that it’s not. And while I’ve tried and tried to make contact with the two women this reminds me of most, I have never been successful.

And these particular folks are a hell of a lot more down to earth than lots of big city types I have known. Some of them anyway.

This is mostly about marbling love into the quotidian—the world you have to live in day to day to day to day. The miraculous and the mundane. The thrills side by side with the trials and the tribulations. It’s like watching a rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s The River: youtu.be/nAB4vOkL6cE

trailer: youtu.be/FTrjVYno6Xk

ALL THE REAL GIRLS [2003]
Written and directed by David Gordon Green

[b]Tip: Are you stupid or just blind?
Noel: Neither one. You clearly don’t know him.
Tip: What are you talking about? I’ve seen him fuck every girl in this town.
Noel: That’s not true.
Tip: It is true. Just ask him.

…

Bo: It’s different when it’s your family.
Paul: I wouldn’t know that.
Bo: What Tip sees in you is exactly what he hates in himself. You think he’s just gonna forgive you and forget about it? Grow up, tell you it’s all right? “Go ahead, date my sister, I’ve seen what you done to every other girl on town, but it’s okay.” What do you want him to do?
Paul: I want him to calm down.
Bo: That’s not going to happen. If you were not in the history of all as the hapless ex-boyfriend. But you are.

…

Girl [to Tip]: He’s gonna fuck your sister over like he fucked over every other girl in this town.

…

Noel: You’re the first person that I’ve wanted to tell that to, 'cause you’re the first person that I’ve wanted to talk to for more than five minutes…ever.

…

Paul [to Noel after her confession]: I’m looking at you right now and I hear you talking and all the words that are coming out of your mouth are like they’re coming out of a stranger. Why don’t you put your fucking hair back on and come back, just come on back.

…

Paul [drunkenly]: Listen, I want to talk…about when we were dating, I wanted to say to you that if I hurt your feelings…if I hurt your feelings, that I’m sorry…
Mary-Margaret [interrupting]: Shut up.
Paul: I’m sorry I hurt your feelings!
Mary-Margaret: Shut up!
Paul: I’m really sorry and I’m trying to apologize to you in a real way.
Mary-Margaret [seething with anger and pain]: You’re not sorry. You know how I know that? Because you’re not smart enough to be sorry. Guys like you…you never quit, and you never leave - you’re gonna be here forever. How does it make you feel knowing that?

…

Paul [to Mary-Margaret]: Do you wanna know a secret that I didn’t tell anybody ever?.. You know how ducks fly home in a V? It’s like a v-shape when they get home? I was walking my dog and I looked up and there’s this big V above me, there’s all these ducks flying back to their home. And right when they flew above me, I saw 'em and, they crashed into a big house! The whole V! And then, they hit the ground, and they just kinda curled up. You ever fucking see that? Have you ever seen a mistake in nature? Have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?

…

Noel: I don’t know what to say to you, anymore.
Paul: Then don’t say anything.
Noel: Okay, then don’t smoke in my room.

…

Elvira [Paul’s mother]: You sitting around crying, it ain’t gonna do you any good. I got news for you. Grow up and balance your personal life with your responsibilites.
Paul: What am I supposed to do, dress up as a clown and change bed pans? I don’t understand why I have to listen to this crap when you know I’m fucking standing here with a broken heart about ready to split my ribs.
Elvira: Oh that’s good. That’s a good one.
[She flaps the clown costume]
Elvira: Do you know what this is? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?!
Paul: Clown clothes.
Elvira: That’s right. This is what I get for living through hard times. These are the clothes I wear. This is my face now. Do you want to look like me? Do you want to look like this? I was fucking beautiful!
[She slaps him across the face. Then again]
Elvira: Look at me. I got my own battles to attend to. It don’t mean that I don’t love you. It’s just that I can see the future and you got other opportunities. Opportunities that I don’t have.[/b]

[iambiguous]

A post modern family if there ever was one. At least here in America. The father is gone and the mother is struggling in order to pay all the bills necessary to raise two kids. There is nothing that really anchors them. So [one day at a time] they deal with the dysfunction as best they can. And one of them is losing her mind. She’s just a kid. About 6 years old and already a cutter. She thinks she’s an angel when she flies out the window.

Life pummels them and they pummel each other. That’s the American way.

And sex. The accursed male libido. It has to be reined in and most times most men [of this sort] are able to. But things can get complicated. We just pretend that they don’t.

On the other hand, he knows how vulnerable she is. And he is familiar enough about her precarious “situation” to know this: that sex with him can only make things a whole lot worse.

And the hints are broad: He’s done this before.

Good luck trying to put it all in perspective.

My own particular subtext: Where does the government fit into all this? What is the minimum each citizen should be able to expect from it? Especially children. Should Megan have to abandon the poetry contest because her family can’t afford to get her to it? Should she be reduced to stealing ties from her employer?

trailer: youtu.be/HGsFg8ESkP8

BLUE CAR [2002]
Written and directed by Karen Moncrieff

[b]Lily [reading from a book]: “A man in Mexico burst his own eardrums with a pencil and sewed his eyelids shut because he said the government is deaf and blind to people’s pain.”

…

Diane [Megan’s mother]: I expect you to take care of her when I’m gone.
Meg: Get a babysitter.
Diane: I can’t afford a babysitter. You do have a responsibility to this family.
Meg: You had her. You take care of her.
Diane [startled]: What did you say?

…

Meg [to Lily]: It’s gonna get infected. You gotta stop hurting yourself.

…

Auster: A world emerges from little details. For example, when we buried my son, I had forgotten to put in my contact lenses. I stood over him before they closed the coffin, trying to fix him in my memory. I could see the red from his sweater and his blue pants, and there was a scab on his forehead that hadn’t healed. It was from a bicycle accident. I could feel that scab when I kissed him, but when I looked at him…he was out of focus.

…

Auster [after reading her poem]: Okay…you tell me.
Meg: I don’t know.
Auster: Why not? Are you afraid I’m going to tell you your work stinks?
Meg: Does it?
Auster: What do you think?
Meg: Probably. I don’t know.
Auster: Come back when you do.
[rises, starts to leave]
Meg: It doesn’t stink. There’s a line that I like.
Auster: Which one?
Meg: “Lost leaves spin past the glass, but the trees don’t go. They stay by my window.”
Auster: What about the rest of it?
Meg: I could go deeper.
Auster: Good for you.

…

Meg [to Auster]: Why are you so nice to me?

…

Meg: I’ll go and live with Dad.
Diane: Oh, good. You do that. You think he is so wonderful? See how you like it.
Meg: At least he doesn’t control everything I do.
Diane: Your father doesn’t give a shit about you. How many times did he come last year? Three?
Meg: He doesn’t come because of you.
Diane: He can’t even manage to pay the $60 a week in child support he owes me. I am up to here in debt to give you a life I can’t afford. I go to work 12 hours a day and I go to school at night so that I can make life nice.

…

Meg [at poetry contest]: This poem – po-em – is for Mr. Auster. It’s called “Now That I’ve Read Your Book”.[/b]

[iambiguous]

She was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she’s bloody bored. And she is fully determined [and fully prepared] to make damn sure everybody knows it.

Besides she can get away with it [around some] because she’s so gorgeous.

It’s the 1950s. England. No Beatles yet. So there’s really not much here that isn’t viewed as an act of rebellion. But she’s no teddy boy.

Instead, she sees through much of the bullshit that is “normal society” and plays the innocent waif. Gosh, what’s all the fuss, she seems to says, all I did was…

But, really, how many options [for “girls”] were there back then?

In many ways she is not nearly as sophisticated as she likes others to think she is. And she plays her games around folks not so much intent on being dignified as in being seen that way by others. Every culture has its own rendition of saving face.

Look, if all you do is watch the scene with her and shrink going through the alphabet, you know you’re watching a gem.

Oh, and by the way, “Up yer bum!”

trailer: youtu.be/ncj0HB6TA_o

WISH YOU WERE HERE [1987]
Written and directed by David Leland

[b]Lynda: Have I got nice tits, or have I got nice tits?

…

Lynda: But I was only showing them my new knickers, Mr. Figgis, look.

…

Dave: Do you fancy me?
Lynda: Not half as much as you fancy yourself.

…

Lynda: Just trying to find a cat, Mrs. Fartly.

…

Lynda: Do you love me?
Eric: No, I don’t love anyone…not even myself.

…

Lynda [to Eric]: You don’t know how lucky you are. I’m practicaly a virgin.

…

Lynda: No plonker, no nooky.

…

Eric [unbuttoning her dress]: You’d better take this off and all. I can just fit you in before the novices handicap at Kempton.
Lynda: Just hold me please, just hold me.[/b]

Needless to say, he’s not the holding type.

Eric: I don’t believe you. How? How do you know you’re pregnant?
Lynda: You’re the one who should know. You put it up me, Mr. Bareback Rider. You knew when you were gonna spunk! How the hell was I supposed to know?! All you see are tits and arses.
Eric: Have you seen a doctor? How do you know it’s mine?
Lynda: If it walks with a limp and thinks with its prick, it’s yours.

[iambiguous]

Watching this is always a surreal and exasperating experience for me. It is basically two films in one. One is completely enthralling and the other is, well, rather tedious. To me. Judah, Ben, Jack and Dolores converge around the crime while Cliff, Lester, Halley and Wendy haggle over the misdemeanors. It’s actually reached the point now where, aside from the part where Professor Levy comes into play, I’m mostly fast fowarding on to the crime. Lester and Halley in particular set my teeth to grinding.

In my view, this might well have been as enthraling as Another Woman had he saved the comedy for his next film. Remember Alice? Me neither.

The Seder scene alone is a masterpiece.

I just think it would have been so much beter had it explored in more depth, say, the relationship between Judah and Jack…drawing in on some of the characters from the Seder perhaps.

May, for example.

Bottom line: The world with and without God. Because, without Him, morality can never be more than a shifting point of view cobbled together existentially out in a particular world. This film imagines an actual context in which one confronts the proposition that “in the absense of God all things are permitted”. And they are permitted because they are rationalized.

IMDb

Woody Allen felt that he had been too “nice” to the characters in the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, so he wrote this film as a response to those feelings.

at Philosophical Films: philfilms.utm.edu/1/crimes.htm
at Film Intuition: filmintuition.com/Crimes.html
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_and_Misdemeanors

trailer: youtu.be/5wXqwL3akhw

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS [1989]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Clifford [on Lester’s films]: Hey, I can’t watch his stuff. It’s sub-mental.

…

Judah [to Ben]: I’ve done a foolish thing. Senseless, vain, dumb. Another woman. Maybe I was flattered, vulnerable. Maybe because she was helpless and alone. Now my life’s about to go up in smoke.

…

Judah: You know what’s funny? Our entire adult lives, you and I have been having this same conversation in one form or another.
Ben: It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless, and I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness, and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there’s no basis to know how to live. And I know you well enough to know that the spark of that notion is inside you, too.

…

Professor Levy [voiceover]: The unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares but, at the same time, he also demands that you behave morally. But here comes the paradox. What’s one of the first things that that God asks? That God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son, to him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts, we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.

…

Clifford: A strange man defecated on my sister.
Wendy [matter of factly]: Why?
Clifford: I don’t know. Is there any reason I could give you that would answer that satisfactorily? Human sexuality is just…it’s so mysterious. Which I guess is…you know. I guess it’s good in a way.

…

Judah [to Jack]: Let me get something straight here…

…

Judah [to Jack]: She’s not an insect! You don’t just step on her![/b]

Instead, you hire someone else to.

[b][in an imagined conversation]
Ben: It’s a human life. You don’t think God sees?
Judah: God is a luxury I can’t afford.
Ben: Now you’re talking like your brother Jack.
Judah: Jack lives in the real world. You live in the kingdom of heaven. I’d managed to keep free of that real world but suddenly it’s found me.
Ben: You fool around with her for your pleasure and then when you think its enough you sweep her under the rug.
Judah: There’s no other solution but Jack’s, Ben. I push one button and I can sleep at nights.
Ben: But the law, Judah. Without the law, it’s all darkness.
Judah: You sound like my father. What good is the law if it prevents me from receiving justice? Is just justice? Is this what I deserve?

…

Judah: It’s pure evil, Jack! A man kills for money and he doesn’t even know his victims!

…

[in Judah’s imagination]
Man: What are you saying, May? There’s no morality anywhere in the whole world?
May: For those who want morality, there’s morality. Nothing’s handed down in stone.
Woman: Sol’s kind of faith is a gift. It’s like an ear for music, or the talent to draw. He believes. You can use logic on him and he still believes.
Man: Must everything be logical?
Judah: And if a man commits a crime, if he…if he kills…
Sol: One way or another he will be punished.
Man: If he’s caught, Sol.
Sol: If he’s not, that which originates from a black deed will blossom in a foul manner.
Man: You’re relying too heavily on the Bible.
Sol: No, no, no. Whether it’s the Old Testament or Shakespeare, murder will out.
Judah: Who said anything about murder?
Sol: You did.
Judah: Did I?
May: And I say, if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he’s home free. Remember, history is written by the winners.
Man: And if all your faith is wrong, Sol, I mean just what if?
Sol: Then I’ll still have a better life than all of those that doubt.
May: Wait a minute, are you telling me that you prefer God to the truth?
Sol: If necessary I will always choose God over truth.

…

Professor Levy [voiceover]: But we must always remember that we, when we are born, we need a great deal of love in order to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love it usually lasts us. But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we who invest it with our feelings. And, under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn’t worth it any more.

…

Clifford [to Halley after Professor Levy’s demise]: He left a note. He left a simple little note that said “I’ve gone out the window.” This is a major intellectual and he leaves a note that says “I’ve gone out the window.” He’s a role-model. You’d think he’d leave a decent note.

…

Judah: I believe in God, Miriam. Because without God, the world’s a cesspool.

…

Judah: …and after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background which he’d rejected are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice. He imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken. He’s on the verge of a mental collapse-an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished. In fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person-a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scott-free. His life is completely back to normal. Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.
Clifford: Yeah, but can he ever really do back?
Judah: Well, people carry sins around with them. Oh, maybe once in a while he has a bad moment…but then in time it all fades.
Clifford: Yeah, but now his worst beliefs are realized.
Judah: Well, I said it was a chilling story.[/b]

With God though, there’s the part about after we die. There’s the part about Sin and Hell and Devine Justice.

Judah: In reality, we rationalize, we deny, or we couldn’t go on living.
Clifford: Here’s what I would do. I would have him turn himself in because then your story assumes tragic proportions because in the absense of a God he’s forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.
Judah: But that’s fiction, that’s movies. You’ve seen too many movies. I’m talking about reality. I mean if you want a happy ending you should go see a Hollywood movie.

Or broach it here with an objectivist.

Professor Levy [voiceover]: We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

It’s the same ending Allen always opts for. But then what other one is there in a world without God?

[iambiguous]

Giles De’ath?

Well, at least we’re off to a good start.

He is the consumate intellectual. There is art and “culture”. And there are words piled up aesthetically into sublime ideas. And then there is everything else.

But among all “else” there is the flesh. And he is smitten. And, apparently, this is how it works for gay folks who still live in the 19th century too.

Come on, lots of us have these vicarious “relationships”. We see someone up on the screen and the fantasies begin. And they play themselves out right up to the moment he/she opens his/her mouth and says something. Then we rationalize. They aren’t like that in “real life”. They are forced to be these cartoon characters because that’s the only stuff “the industry” makes. And even if they aren’t all that much like us “in reality” once we spend some time with them we can turn them around. What’s really important is that “in the flesh” they turn us on and we want them.

Not entirely sure why but it all sort of reminds me of…Lolita?

trailer: youtu.be/fdeIKlZ7fVY [couldn’t find one in English]

LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND [1997]
Written and directed by Richard Kwietniowski

[b]Giles [voiceover]: It is so difficult to know where I should begin, especially when, unlike you, I already know the ending. But let us say that this story began with the end of another far, far from the surf of Long Island. For many years, I had absolutely no public life. I had said, “No,” to interviews so often, it was widely regarded as my forte. Then, just once – on impulse – I said, “Yes.”

…

Giles [aloud in the theater]: “This isn’t EM Forster.”

…

Taxi Driver: The sign says “no smoking.”
Giles: No, the sign says “thank you for not smoking.” As I am smoking, I don’t expect to be thanked.

…

An imagined Quiz Master: And what is your chosen specialized subject?
Giles: The life and work of Ronnie Bostock.
Quiz Master: You have two minutes on the life and work of Ronnie Bostock, starting…now. Ronnie Bostock was born in Southern California but where does he live now?
Giles: Chesterton, Long Island.
Quiz Master: Correct. What is the name of the dog which features prominently in his publicity stills?
Giles: Strider.
Quiz Master: Correct. What is Ronnie Bostock’s favorite reading material?
Giles: Stephen King and science fiction.
Quiz Master: Correct. For what does Ronnie have a self-confessed weakness?
Giles: Pizza?
Quiz Master: Yes. I’ll accept that. It’s actually pizza with extra anchovies. Under what circumstances would Ronnie do a nude scene?
Giles: If it were tasteful…
Quiz Master: And?
Giles: …essential to the plot.
Quiz Master: Correct. Why was he not cast in the original Hotpants College?
Giles: Uh, too young?
Quiz Master: No. He was unable…to break his contract with the sitcom Home Is Where The Heart Is. What is Ronnie’s favorite kind of training shoe and why?
Giles: Reeboks, because British stuff is cool.
Quiz Master: Correct. With which of his rock idols was he recently photographed?
Giles: Axl Rose.
Quiz Master: Correct. Ronnie claims to like nothing better than hanging out with the guys. What exactly do these “guys” mean to him?
Giles: I wonder…

…

Giles: If one has to have a theme, Henry, it would be the discovery of beauty where no one ever thought of looking for it.

…

Giles [as a lecturer]: So, the largely unrecognized art of film acting depends entirely on the ability of the actor to make everything about himself seem equally permanent. When, thus, an actor is called upon to smile, he must then try to select a smile from a collection – a repertoire – a whole file of smiles, as it were. Naive, rueful, sly, sarcastic…and so on.

…

Giles [looking at himself in the mirror]: Dear God, this is ridiculous.

…

Giles: In Europe, we have a much stronger tradition of work with what you call a message. That is, after all, why I’ve been persuaded to write my first screenplay. Yes, if Tex Mex had been, say, German about the plight of the exploited Gastarbeiters, it would have met with a far greater success. It probably would have made less money than Hotpants, but in Europe we’re not necessarily interested in that kind of a success, not when a film can change the way people think. And that, Ronnie, is why I write. It’s also why you act, although you may not yet know it.[/b]

Now it’s up to Ronnie to play his part.

[b]Giles: Ronnie, there is nothing more solitary than an artist’s life. No doubt you’ll find that out for yourself. Painfully, perhaps. One yearns for solace without quite knowing where to look for it. But I found it in you.
Ronnie: Oh–That’s great.
Giles: Ronnie, I have another confession to make. I brought you here not to say good-bye, but to make you an offer.
Ronnie: An offer?
Giles: I am prepared to devote myself to your career.
Ronnie: Wow, Giles, I, uh–I’m honored. I don’t know what to say. You got to come out west. We can start to work on something.
Giles: No, Ronnie, forget Los Angeles. Put it behind you. Your future lies in Europe.
Ronnie: Giles, I gotta take things one step at a time. Aud would love to go back to Europe and do more work. It would be cool to spend time there–
Giles: “Cool”? I’m talking about a turning point in your life!

…

Giles: Listen to me, Ronnie. In Europe, it is often the case that a–a young man benefits from the–the wisdom and the experience of an elder. Why, there’s almost a tradition of such friendships. Cocteau and Radiguet. Uh, Verlaine, Rimbaud.
Ronnie: Rambo?
Giles: Arthur Rimbaud, French poet. He…He was Paul Verlaine’s lover.

…

Giles [to himself after Ronnie leaves]: Dear God. What have I done.

…

Giles [voiceover in a fax to Ronnie]: But what of you my darling? For no one on earth knows you better than I do. And if you’ve read thus far, I know you’ll never bring yourself to destroy this letter, nor will you ever show it to anyone else. And it will gradually dawn on you that your life might have taken a very different course had you simply been able to open your heart to another. And you’ll often return to this letter. You’ll read it again and again in the years to come until you no longer have to read what you know by heart. And you’ll cherish it as a source of pride in the face of an uncaring world.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Based on a true [and oh so familiar] story.

The names of the tragedies change like the names of the folks that made them names in the first place. But it always revolves around the part that libertarians and objectivists [among others] insist has little or nothing to do with real capitalism.

After all, if a company is befouling the water we drink or the food we eat or the air we breathe and people start to get sick and die we can just go out into the marketplace and get these things from a competitor. And we can always rely on the governmment to do the right thing when they get caught.

Erin is rather resourceful. She always seems to come up with a way to solve her problems. But, again, why in the world should someone be reduced to this in the richest nation on earth?

What’s crucial of course is not that a major corporation fucked up and people died. After all, it’s not like it was premeditated murder. It’s not like they meant to do it. What’s important is that over and over and over and over and over and over again the expression “profits before people” has very real [sometimes dire] consequences “out on the world”.

But claims were “settled”. And the criminal prosecutions? Where were they? Are any of these fuckers in jail?

This is a movie about emotion. Erin takes the lawsuit personally because she is absolutely outraged at what these “suits” did – destroyed lives! killed people! – and knew that they did and never gave a fuck about anything other than their own bottom line. Right up to the time they got caught.

But “the law” doesn’t revolve around this sort of reaction and never will.

And that’s before you get to the part about the money.

I always come back to this though: these folks killed people [and knew they did] and all that goes back and forth is money. Nobody goes to jail. It’s like all the mindnumbing pain and suffering the bankers caused [to millions] flushing the economy down the toilet and none of them were ever indicted for, say, conspiracy to commit fraud. Or, in Washington, for accepting bribes from the cronies on K Street?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich_(film
Ein Brockovich at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich

ERIN BROCKOVICH [2000]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[b]Erin: Don’t make me beg. If it doesn’t work out, fire me…But please don’t make me beg.
Ed [after a long pause]: No benefits.

…

George [to Erin]: What’s the matter, you got so many friends in this world, you can’t use one more?

…

George [parrying Erin’s rejection of free babysitting]: Are you always this hard on people who try and help you?
Erin: I’m out of practice.

…

Erin [at the moment that started it all]: I’m sorry. I just don’t see why you’re corresponding with PG&E about your medical problems in the first place.
Donna Jensen: Well, they paid for the doctor’s visit.
Erin: They did?
Donna Jensen: You bet. Paid for a checkup for the whole family. And not like with insurance where you pay and a year goes by and maybe you see some money. They just took care of it just like…
[snaps fingers]
Donna Jensen: …that. We never even saw a bill.
Erin: Wow. Why’d they do that?
Donna Jensen: Because of the chromium.
Erin: The what?
Donna Jensen: The chromium. Well, that’s what kicked this whole thing off.

…

Frankel: What kind of chromium is it?
Erin: There’s more than one kind?
Frankel: Yes. There’s straight-up chromium – does all kinds of good things for the body. There’s chrom 3, which is fairly benign, and then there’s chrom 6, hexavalent chromium, which, depending on the amounts, can be very harmful.
Erin: Harmful, like – how? What would you get?
Frankel: With repeated exposure to toxic levels – God, anything, really – from chronic headaches and nosebleeds to respiratory disease, liver failure, heart failure, reproductive failure, bone or organ deterioration – plus, of course, any type of cancer.
Erin: So that stuff – it kills people.
Frankel: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Highly toxic, highly carcinogenic. It also getds into your DNA so it very bad for your kids. Bad, bad stuff.

…

Frankel [to Erin]: Oh, and I wouldn’t advertise what you’re looking for if I were you…incriminating records have a way of disappearing when people smell trouble.

…

Erin: …so Donna gets this call from somebody at PG&E saying that a freeway’s gonna be built and they want to buy her house so they can make an off ramp for the plant…Meanwhile, the husband’s sick with Hodgkins and she’s in and out of the hospital with tumors - believing one thing has anything to do with the other.
Ed: Because PG&E told her about the chromium.
Erin: Get this - they held a seminar. They invited about two hundred residents from the area. They had it at the plant in this warehouse. They set up legal booths to tell them what their legal rights were. They had medical booths to tell them what their medical rights were…Telling them all about Chromium 3 and how it was good for you, when all the time they were using Chromium 6.

…

Ed: What makes you think you can just walk in there and take whatever you want?
Erin: They’re called boobs, Ed.

…

Donna: No. Hunh-uh, see, that’s not what the doctor said. He said one’s got absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Erin: Right, but – didn’t you say the doctor was paid by PG&E?

…

Baum: Mr. Masry, before you go off on some crusade, you might want to remember who it is you’re dealing with here. PG&E is a twenty-eight-billion-dollar corporation.
Ed (smiling, acting excited/greedy): Twenty-eight billion dollars! I didn’t know it was that much! WOW!

…

Pete: If PG&E messed with our water, why would they bother saying anything about it to us? Why not just keep quiet about it?
Ed: To establish a statute of limitations. See, in a case like this, you only have a year from the time you first learn about the problem to file suit. So PG&E figures, we’ll let the cat out of the bag – tell the people the water’s not perfect; if we can ride out the year with no one suing, we’ll be in the clear forever.

…

Ed:…and what the hell do you know about any of this anyway!? Something like this, Erin – it could take forever. They’re a huge corporation. They could bury us in paperwork for the next fifteen years. I’m just one guy with a private firm.
Erin: …who happens to know they poisoned people and lied about it.

…

Ed: This is a whole different ball game. A much bigger deal.
Erin: Kind of like David and what’s-his-name.
Ed: It’s kind of like David and what’s-his-name’s whole fucking family.

…

Erin: Hey Scott, Tell me something. Does PG&E pay you to cover their ass, or do you just do it out of the kindness of your heart?
Scott: I don’t know what you’re talking about…
Erin: The fuck you don’t! Nobody calls me Pat-te, That heavy-breathing sicko that called the other night, Could have only found out about me from you… People are dying, Scott, you’ve got document after document here telling you why, and you haven’t said one word. I wanna know… How the hell you sleep at night!

…

Erin: So then it’s all up to what this one judge decides?
Ed: Basically, yeah.[/b]

Here the judges goes their way. In part because his family gets their own water right next door to Hinkley. But had he been one those Bushworld corporate lackey judges, the whole thing could have gone down the drain.

[b]Ms. Sanchez [at the meeting with the PG & E lawyers]: Let’s be honest here. $20 million dollars is more money than these people have ever dreamed of.
Erin: Oh see, now that pisses me off. First of all, since the demur we have more than 400 plaintiffs and…let’s be honest, we all know there are more out there. They may not be the most sophisticated people but they do know how to divide and $20 million isn’t shit when you split it between them. Second of all, these people don’t dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that they’ll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of twenty. Like Rosa Diaz, a client of ours. Or have their spine deteriorate, like Stan Blume, another client of ours. So before you come back here with another lame ass offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker. Or what you might expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez. Then you take out your calculator and you multiply that number by a hundred. Anything less than that is a waste of our time.
[Ms. Sanchez picks up a glass of water]
Erin: By the way, we had that water brought in specially for you folks. Came from a well in Hinkley.
Ms. Sanchez [Puts down the glass, without drinking]: I think this meeting is over.
Ed: Damn right it is.

…

Matthew [son]: This girl’s about my age. Is she one of the people you’re helping?
Erin: Yeah, she’s really sick so I’m going to get her some medicine to feel better.
Matthew: Why doesn’t her own mom get her medicine?
Erin: Because her mom’s really sick too.
Matthew: Oh.

…

Erin [to Ed]: NOT PERSONAL?! That is my WORK, my SWEAT, and MY TIME AWAY FROM MY KIDS! IF THAT IS NOT PERSONAL, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS!

…

Charles Embry: Would it be important to you if I told you that when I worked at the Hinkley plant, I destroyed records?

…

Charles Embry: My cousin passed away yesterday. He had kidney tumors, no colon. His intestines were eaten away. 41 years old. I’d see him over at the cooling towers wearing one of those doctor face masks. They’d be soaked in blood from the nosebleeds.

…

Charles Embry: I was working in the compressor, and out of nowhere the supervisor calls me up to the office and says, we’re gonna give you a shredder machine, and send you on down to the warehouse. We want you to get rid of all the documents stored out there.
Erin: Did he say why?
Charles Embry: Nope. And I didn’t ask.
Erin: Did you get a look at the stuff you destroyed?
Charles Embry: There was a lot of dull stuff – vacation schedules, the like. But then there were a few memos about the holding ponds. The water in them. They had readings from test wells, stuff like that.
Erin: And you were told to destroy those?
Charles Embry: That’s right. Erin plays it down, takes a sip of beer…Course as it turns out, I’m not a very good employee.

…

Erin [to Kurt and Theresa]: Here are internal PG&E documents, all about the contamination. The one I like best says, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it says “yes, the water’s poisonous, but it’d be better for all involved if this matter wasn’t discussed with the neighbors”. It’s to the Hinkley station, from PG&E Headquarters. Stamped received, March, 1966.

…

Kurt: Wha… how did you do this?
Erin: Well, um, seeing as how I have no brains or legal expertise, and Ed here was losing all faith in the system, am I right?
Ed: Oh, yeah, completely. No faith, no faith…
Erin: I just went out there and performed sexual favors. Six hundred and thirty-four blow jobs in five days… I’m really quite tired.

…

Erin: Ya know why everyone thinks that all lawyers are back stabbing, blood sucking scum bags? Because they are! And I cannot believe you expect me to go out, leave my kids with strangers and get people to trust you with their lives while all the while you’re screwing me! You know, Ed, it’s not about the number! It’s about the way my work is valued in this firm…
[She looks at the two million dollar bonus check]
Ed: Like I was saying, I thought that the number you proposed was inappropriate, so I increased it.
[Turns to walk away and turns around to her]
Ed: Do they teach beauty queens how to apologize? Because you suck at it!
Erin [Long pause, after Ed has already left the office]: Uh, Ed… uh… thank you…

…

Title card: The settlement awarded to the plaintiffs in Hinkley v. PG&E was the largest in a direct-action lawsuit in United States history.[/b]

[iambiguous]

After one smacks down the capitalists [above] he can then move on to the Communists. The lives of others? Indeed.

So, which one is the worst of all possible worlds?

As always: It depends on where you are at any particular place and time. And who you are.

Here though some of the government officials really do act out of idealistic conviction. The whole point [for them] is the triumph of socialism. When they go after enemies of the state the bottom line is not expressed in bulging wallets but in moral obligations.

And then there are the corrupt bastards. For them the bottom line revolves around the perks of power.

You have all of these people in the “artistic community” going right up to the line…but trying not to cross over it. But the line keeps changing depending on the will [or the whim] of the “big wigs”. There is much at stake but the bottom line here is always the same: different people have more at stake than others. In other words, a lot more to lose. Every point of view is unique however much some try to cram them all together.

IMDb

All the listening/recording props used in the film are actual Stasi equipment on loan from museums and collectors. The props master had himself spent two years in a Stasi prison and insisted upon absolute authenticity down to the machine used at the end of the film to steam-open up to 600 letters per hour.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

trailer: youtu.be/n3_iLOp6IhM

THE LIVES OF OTHERS [Das Leben der Anderen] 2006
Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[b]Title card: 1984, East Berlin. Glasnost is nowhere in sight. The population of the GRD is kept under strict control by the Stasi, the East German secret police. Its force of 100,000 employees and 200,000 informers safeguards the Dictatorship ot the Proletariat. It’s declared goal: “To know everything”.

…

Student [at the Stasti academy]: Why keep him awake so long? It’s inhuman.
Wiesler [putting a mark next to his name]: An innocent prisoner will become more angry by the hour due to the injustice suffered. He will shout and rage. A guilty prisoner becomes more calm and quiet. Or he cries. He knows he’s there for a reason. The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation.

…

Wiesler [to Dreyman’s neighbor after she beomes aware that Stasi has wired his apartment]: Frau Meineke, one word of this to anyone, and Masha loses her spot at the university. Is that understood.
Frau Meineke: Yes.
Wiesler [to colleague]: Send Frau Menieke a gift for her cooperation.

…

Wiesler [typing his report]: 11:04 p.m… Lazlo and CMS unwrap presents. Then presumably have intercourse.

…

Lt. Stigler: I’ve got a new one. So…Honecker comes into his office in the morning, opens the window, looks at the sun, and says…
[his friends look worried]
Lt. Stigler:… eh… what is it?
[he sees Wiesler and Grubitz sitting at the table]
Lt. Stigler: Oh, excuse me. That was… I’m just… I…
Grubitz [tries to put Stigler at ease]: No no no, please colleague. We can still laugh about our state officials. Don’t worry. I probably know it already anyway. Come on! Tell it.
Lt. Stigler [feeling more comfortable]: Well… Honecker, I mean…the General Secretary… sees the sun, and says, ‘Good morning dear sun!’…and the sun answered, ‘Good morning dear Erich!’ At afternoon Erich sees the sun again and says, ‘Good day dear sun’ And the sun says: ‘Good day dear Erich!’ After work Honecker goes back to the window and says, ‘Good evening dear sun!’ But the sun doesn’t answer! So he says again, ‘Good evening dear sun, what’s wrong?’ And the sun answered and said, ‘Oh, kiss my ass, I’m in the West now!’
Grubitz [becoming deadly serious]: Name? Rank? Department?
Lt. Stigler [frightened]: Me? Stigler, 2nd Lieutenant Alex Stigler. Department M.
Grubitz: I don’t need to tell you what this means for your career, what you just did.
Lt. Stigler [scared]: Please Lieutenant Colonel… I just…
Grubitz [angry]: You just mocked our party! That was political agitation! Surely just the tip of the iceberg! I am going to report this to the minister’s office.
[Grubitz starts laughing]
Grubitz: I was just kidding! Pretty good, huh? Yours was good too. But I’ve got a better one. What is the difference between Erich Honecker and a telephone?
[pauses]
Grubitz: Nothing! Hang up… try again. Hahaha![/b]

From IMDb: The punchline of the joke is a play on the words ‘aufhängen’ and ‘neuwählen’. In terms of a telephone it means hang up and redial, respectively. In terms of politics it means hang somebody and elect someone new.

[b]Wiesler [aloud to himself]: Time for some bitter truths, “Lazlo”.

…

Georg [answering the phone]: Yes?
Wallner: Georg? Wallner herre
Georg: What’s up?
Wallner: Georg, it’s about Jerska. He hanged himself last night.

…

Georg [to Christa]: You know what Lenin said about Beethoven’s Apassionata? He said, “if I keep listening to it, I won’t finish the revolution.” Can anyone who has heard this music – truly heard it – really be a bad person?

…

[Wiesler enters the elevator at his apartment building. A young boy with a ball joins him]
Boy: Are you really with the Stasi?
Wiesler: Do you even know what the Stasi is?
Boy: Yes. They’re bad men who put people in prison, says my dad.
Wiesler: I see. What is the name of your…
[pauses]
Boy: My what?
Wiesler [thinks for a few more seconds]: …ball. What’s the name of your ball?
Boy: You’re funny. Balls don’t have names.

…

Georg [of Hempf]: You are a great artist. I know that. Your audience knows that. You don’t need him. Stay here. Don’t go to him.
Christa: No? Don’t I need him? Don’t I need this whole system? And what about you? Then you don’t need it either. Or need it even less. But you get in bed with them, too. Why do you do it? Because they can destroy you, too, despite your talent and your faith. Because they decide what we play, who isw to act, and who can direct. You don’t want to end up like Jerska. And neither do I.

…

Georg [voiceover]: The state office for statistics on Hans-Beimler street counts everything; knows everything: how many pairs of shoes I buy a year: 2.3, how many books I read a year: 3.2 and how many students graduate with perfect marks: 6,347. But there’s one statistic that isn’t collected there, perhaps because such numbers cause even paper-pushers pain: and that is the suicide rate.

…

Georg ]voiceover]: In 1977, our country stopped counting suicides. They called them “self-murderers.”…When we stopped counting, only one country in Europe drove more people to their death: Hungary.

…

Grubitz [to Wiesler]: I have to show you something: “Prison Conditions for Subversive Artists: Based on Character Profile”. Pretty scientific, eh? And look at this: “Dissertation Supervisor, A. Grubitz”. That’s great, isn’t it? I only gave him a B. They shouldn’t think getting a doctorate with me is easy. But his is first-class. Did you know that there are just five types of artists? Your guy, Dreyman, is a Type 4, a “hysterical anthropocentrist.” Can’t bear being alone, always talking, needing friends. That type should never be brought to trial. They thrive on that. Temporary detention is the best way to deal with them. Complete isolation and no set release date. No human contact the whole time, not even with the guards. Good treatment, no harassment, no abuse, no scandals, nothing they could write about later. After 10 months, we release. Suddenly, that guy won’t cause us any more trouble. Know what the best part is? Most type 4s we’ve processed in this way never write anything again. Or paint anything, or whatever artists do. And that without any use of force. Just like that. Kind of like a present.

…

Grubitz [to Wiesler]: There’s one thing you should understand, Wiesler. Your career is over. Even if you were too smart to leave any traces. You’ll end up in some cellar, steam-opening letters until you retire. That means the next 20 years. 20 years. That’s a long time.

…

Bookstore cashier: 29.80. Would you like it gift wrapped?
Wiesler: No. It’s for me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

But…seriously?

Well, I come back to this “theme” time and time again: pop culture, mindless consumption and 24/7 celebrities. It’s everywhere. And the paradox is this: it is both deadening and infuriating.

But this is no Idiocracy.

Roger Ebert: The first half hour or so…promises so much more than the film is finally able to deliver. Here is a film that begins with merciless comic savagery and descends into merely merciless savagery. But wow, what an opening.

It simply fails to live up to its potential.

But obviously for some more so than for others. It depends in large part on the distance you are able to keep between you and them. After all, no one forces you to indulge in this crap. On the other hand, you either are or are not able to distant yourself from “the masses”.

Think of this as doing “the worst person in the world” with guns.

But with each passing year it gets harder and harder to satirize this stuff because the actual culture itself is already way ahead of you.

Want to exchange lists?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_America_(film
trailer: youtu.be/GEFj0Pngu_E

GOD BLESS AMERICA [2011]
Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

[b]Frank [voiceover]: I hate my neighbors. The constant cacophony of stupidity that pours from their apartment is absolutely soul-crushing. It doesn’t matter how politely I ask them to practice some common courtesy - they’re incapable of comprehending that their actions affect other people. They have a complete lack of consideration for anyone else, and an overly developed sense of entitlement. They have no decency, no concern, no shame. They do not care that I suffer from debilitating migraines and insomnia. They do not care that I have to go to work, or that I want to kill them. I know it’s not normal to want to kill, but I also know that I am no longer normal.

…

Ed [the neighbor]: Hey buddy, what’s wrong?
Frank [pumping shotgun]: A lot.

…

Frank: I wish I was a super-genius inventor and could come up with a way to make a telephone into an explosive device that was triggered by the American Superstarz voting number. The battery could explode and leave a mark on the face, so I could know who to avoid talking to before they even talked.

…

Frank: It’s not nice to laugh at someone who’s not all there. It’s the same type of freak-show distraction that comes along every time a mighty empire starts collapsing. “American Superstarz” is the new colosseum and I won’t participate in watching a show where the weak are torn apart every week for our entertainment. I’m done, really, everything is so “cool” now. I just want it all to stop. I mean, nobody talks about anything anymore. They just regurgitate everything they see on TV, or hear on the radio or watch on the web. When was the last time you had a real conversation with someone without somebody texting or looking at a screen or a monitor over your head? You know, a conversation about something that wasn’t celebrities, gossip, sports, or pop politics. You know, something important, something personal.

…

Frank: Oh, I get it. I am offended. But not just because I got a problem with bitter, predictible, whining millionaire disc jockeys complaining about celebrities or how tough their life is, while I live in an apartment with paper-thin walls next to a couple of Neanderthals who, instead of a baby, decided to give birth to some kind of nocturnal civil defense air raid siren that goes off every fucking night like it’s Pearl Harbor.

…

Office Worker: So, you’re against free speech now? That’s in the Bill of Rights, man.
Frank: I would defend their freedom of speech if I thought it was in jeopardy. I would defend their freedom of speech to tell uninspired, bigoted, blowjob, gay-bashing, racist and rape jokes all under the guise of being edgy, but that’s not the edge. That’s what sells. They couldn’t possibly pander any harder or be more commercially mainstream, because this is the “Oh no, you didn’t say that!” generation, where a shocking comment has more weight than the truth. No one has any shame anymore, and we’re supposed to celebrate it. I saw a woman throw a used tampon at another woman last night on network television, a network that bills itself as “Today’s Woman’s Channel”. Kids beat each other blind and post it on Youtube. I mean, do you remember when eating rats and maggots on Survivor was shocking? It all seems so quaint now. I’m sure the girls from “2 Girls 1 Cup” are gonna have their own dating show on VH-1 any day now. I mean, why have a civilization anymore if we no longer are interested in being civilized?

…

Roxy: Who you going to killing next? Do you take requests? Because I was thinking maybe some Kardashians, my gym coach. People who give high fives. Really, any jock. Twihards. People who talk about punk rock. Who else really rips my cock off? Oh, Mormons and other religious assholes who won’t let gay people be married. And adult women who call their tits “the girls”.

…

Roxy: You’re seriously not interested in me at all as a girlfriend?
Frank: What the hell are you talking about? I’m not a pedophile.
Roxy: So we’re Platonic spree killers?
Frank: Yeah. And that’s all.

…

Frank: I only wanna kill people who deserve to die.
Roxy: You know who we should kill?
Frank: Who?
Roxy: People who use rockstar as an adjective. As in rockstar parking.
Frank: People who pound energy drinks all day.
Roxy: People who use the term edgy, in your face, or extreme.[/b]

Uh, and “cool”?

Frank [On the air]: My name is Frank. That’s not important. The important question is: who are you? America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense of decency. No sense of shame. There is no right and wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear is fine as long as you make money doing it. We’ve become a nation of slogan-saying, bile-spewing hatemongers. We’ve lost our kindness. We’ve lost our soul. What have we become? We take the weakest in our society, we hold them up to be ridiculed, laughed at for our sport and entertainment. Laughed at to the point, where they would literally rather kill themselves than live with us anymore.

Unfortunately, Steven doesn’t get that part either. So, fuck it, he goes down too.

[iambiguous]

Either the irony of war or the irony in war. Apparently, that all becomes less relevant if you volunteer for it. Unless of course you volunteer because economically you had no choice. But that’s another movie. Another kind of irony. And [no doubt] another catch altogether.

The catch here though is that this is all only more or less absurd depending on the war. It’s not just a coincidence for example that even though the war in the movie is the Second World War it aired in theatres during the Vietnam War. In fact this movie was released while I myself was stationed in Vietnam! So I missed it. And trust me, it was Patton they showed at military installations, not Catch-22.

Really, try to even imagine this coming out when Hitler was around. It only works then when the death and destruction revolves around the “best and the brightest”. Or [re Dubya, Saddam and Iraq] buffoons.

On the other hand, in all wars there are those who know how to, let’s say, make the best of it. Remember Sergeant Sefton? Well, imagine how much easier it must be when you are not in a Stalag. The wheelers and the dealers in other words. And those who can twist this into that. And then back again. That’s right: Another “syndicate”.

Hmm. So the target here may well be more the, uh, military? Or maybe even [gasp!] the entire military industrial complex? Here in the form of M & M Enterprises. Think Dick Cheney and Haliburton.

IMDb

Second Unit Director John Jordan refused to wear a harness during a bomber scene. While giving a hand signal to another airplane from the tail gunner position in the camera plane, he lost his grip and fell 4000 feet to his death.

Why Catch-22? imdb.com/title/tt0065528/faq … q_1#.2.1.1

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(film

trailer: youtu.be/G41SJUIawVo

CATCH-22 [1970]
Directed by Mike Nichols

Yossarian: Those bastards are trying to kill me.
Milo: No one is trying to kill you sweetheart. Now eat your dessert like a good boy.
Yossarian: Oh yeah? Then why are they shooting at me Milo?
Dobbs: They’re shooting at everyone Yossarian.
Yossarian: And what difference does that make?
Dobbs: Look Yossarian, suppose, I mean just suppose everyone thought the same way you do.
Yossarian: Then I’d be a damn fool to think any different.

Here’s the actual catch:

[b]Yossarian: Can you ground someone who’s crazy?
Doc: Of course. The rules say I have to ground anyone who’s crazy.
Yossarian: I’m crazy! Ask anybody. Ask Nately, Dobbs, McWatt… Orr, tell him!
Orr: Tell him what?
Yossarian: Am I crazy?
Orr: He’s crazy. He won’t fly with me. I’d take good care of him but he won’t. He’s crazy, all right.
Yossarian: See that? They all say I’m crazy.
Doc: They’re crazy.
Yossarian: Ground them.
Doc: They never ask me to.
Yossarian: Because they’re crazy!
Doc: Of course they’re crazy. I just told you that. And you can’t let crazy people decide whether you’re crazy or not, can you?
Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?
Doc: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all the close calls he’s had.
Yossarian: Why can’t you ground him?
Doc: I can, but first he has to ask me.
Yossarian: That’s all he’s gotta do to be grounded?
Doc: That’s all.
Yossarian: Then you can ground him?
Doc: No. Then I cannot ground him.
Yossarian: Aah!
Doc: There’s a catch.
Yossarian: A catch?
Doc: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn’t really crazy, so I can’t ground him.
Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.
Doc: You got it, that’s Catch-22.
Yossarian: Wow…That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
Doc: It’s the best there is.

…

Danby: Weather conditions have improved tremendously over the mainland, so you won’t have any trouble at all seeing the target. Of course, we mustn’t forget, that means that they won’t have any trouble at all seeing you.

…

Milo: If I take a plane this afternoon, I’ll get this material to Alexandria. There’s a huge cotton crop this year. Cotton is a very liquid commodity.
Cathcart: How much?
Milo: We’ll trade for it.
Cathcart: With what?
Milo: Silk! Four thousand yards of silk. How did you get hold of so much silk?
[meanwhile]
Yossarian [in the bomber]: Where the hell’s my parachute?!

…

[repeated lines]
Yossarian: What’s that? I don’t get you.
Voice: Help him!
Yossarian: What?
Voice: Help him! Help him!
Yossarian: Help who?
Voice: Help the bombardier!
Voice: I’m the bombardier, I’m all right.
Voice: Then help HIM. Help HIM!

…

Maj. Major: Sergeant, from now on, I don’t want anyone to come in and see me while I’m in my office. Is that clear?
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. What do I say to people who want to come in and see you while you’re gone?
Maj. Major: Tell them I’m in and ask them to wait.
Sgt. Towser: For how long?
Maj. Major: Until I’ve left.
Sgt. Towser: And then what do I do with them?
Maj. Major: I don’t care.
Sgt. Towser: May I send people in to see you after you’ve left?
Maj. Major: Yes.
First Sgt. Towser: You won’t be here then, will you?
Maj. Major: No.
Sgt. Towser: I see, sir. Will that be all?
Maj. Major: Also, Sergeant, I don’t want you coming in while I’m in my office asking me if there’s anything you can do for me. Is that clear?
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. When should I come in your office and ask if there’s anything I can do for you?
Maj. Major: When I’m not there.
Sgt. Towser: What do I do then?
Maj. Major: Whatever has to be done.
Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir.
[after the major leaves]
Sgt. Towser [to Capt. Tallman]: The major will see you now, Captain.

…

Gen. Dreedle [to Captain Yossarian who is buck naked]: Unless I miss my guess, Captain, you’re out of uniform.

…

Maj. Major: Is something wrong?
Chaplain: No, no. I…I just thought I saw something.
Maj. Major: A naked man in a tree?
Chaplain: Yes, that’s it.
Danby [looking through binoculars]: That’s just Yossarian.

…

Milo: I want to serve this to the men. Taste it and let me know what you think.
[Yossarian takes a bite and spits it out]
Yossarian: What is it?
Milo: Chocolate covered cotton.
Yossarian: What are you, crazy?
Milo: No good, huh?
Yossarian: For Christ’s sake, you didn’t even take the seeds out!
Milo: Is it really that bad?
Yossarian: It’s cotton!!
Milo: They’ve got to learn to like it.
Yossarian: Why?
Milo: I saw an opportunity to corner the market in cotton. I didn’t know there’d be a glut of the stuff. I’ve got warehouses full of it all over Europe. People eat cotton candy, don’t they? This is even better, it’s made out of real cotton.
Yossarian: People can’t eat cotton!
Milo: They’ve got to, for the Syndicate.

…

Yossarian: He was very old.
Luciana: But he was a boy.
Yossarian: Well, he died. You don’t get any older than that.

…

Yossarian: What right did they have to take all the girls?
Old Woman: Catch-22.
Yossarian: What? What did you say?
Old Woman: Catch-22.
Yossarian: How do you know it was Catch-22?
Old woman: The girls said, “Why are you taking us away?” The men said, “Catch-22.” The girls said, “What right do you have?” The men said, “Catch-22.” All they kept saying was, “Catch-22, Catch-22.” What does it mean?
Yossarian: Didn’t they show it to you? Didn’t you ask them to read it to you?
Old woman: They don’t have to show it to us.
Yossarian: Who says so?
Old woman: The law says so.
Yossarian: What law?
Old woman: Catch-22.

…

Yossarian: Milo, I’m gonna kill you, you murdering son of a bitch!
Milo: I know how you feel, but it wasn’t my fault.
Yossarian: Who’s fault was it?
Milo: No one’s. Nately was the victim of certain economic pressures, the laws of supply and demand.

…

Yossarian: I didn’t know.
Luciana: That I work for Milo? Everybody works for Milo.[/b]

As for the ending, I don’t think it’ll catch on.

[iambiguous]

The paper chased here is a transcript of grades…and then a diploma. It hardly focuses at all on the paper that paper chases: the kind we stuff into our wallets. This is back in 1973 though. And idealism was nobler than the pursuit of mere bank accounts. Real integrity instead revolved around securing your humanity in a culture that wants to reduce you down to a pursuit of paper.

In any event the paper now is mostly electronic. It’s all about the numbers. And Harvard law may as well be be taught right on Wall Street.

The “law” is always tricky though. Often it can be infuriating because we know how words can be twisted by a lawyer to create any particular “reality” she chooses. And we know the law can be bought. We know it is used more for political gain than to secure something we might deem to be “just”. But without the rule of law, what’s the alternative? Philosopher kings? Metaphysical morality? Dog eat dog survival of the fittest?

We are stuck with it aren’t we?

In any event the filmmaker tacks on an ending here that doesn’t even have the balls to live up to the film’s own “message”!

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Chase_(film
trailer: tcm.com/mediaroom/video/7824 … iler-.html

THE PAPER CHASE [1973]
Written and directed by James Bridges

[b]Kingsfield: Loudly Mr. Hart, fill this room with your intelligence.

…

Toombs [in the dorm after a loud piercing scream]: That’s just the screamer, men. Screams every Friday and Sunday night at exactly 12 midnight. Nobody’s ever seen him. Not that I know of. They say that Kingsfield drove him mad. He’s driven a lot of lawyers mad over the past 40 years that he’s been teaching here. I heard he ripped up a 1-L this morning so bad, the guy lost his breakfast.
Hart: That’s true. That was me.

…

Toombs [to Hart]: There’s one more thing. All that stuff about grades is true. You gotta work like hell. No kidding. Nobody jokes about grades. Try getting a job without them.

…

Kingsfield: The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you. We use the Socratic Method here. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it. Why don’t I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions, you learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering… questioning, answering…we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering. At times you may feel that you have found the correct answer. I assure you that is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question…and question to follow your answer.[/b]

Of course, some answers will get you an A and others an F.

[b]Kingsfield: You teach yourselves the law…but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

…

Hart [to Susan]: You’re up against some incredible minds here. I look at the students and I think this guy’s gonna be a supreme court justice, this guy’s gonna run Wall Street, this guy might even be president of the United States. What it is though is this incredible sense of power.[/b]

See where the “Socratic Method” begins to shut down? The questions it doesn’t encourage him to ask?

[b]Susan: You law students are all the same. You can’t let things alone. You have to organize. The endless defining of irrational human behavior into tight little patterns. People are not rational. People are irrational.

…

Moss: So you flunked all your practice exams, huh? Every one?
Brooks: Yeah, every one.
Moss: Aww man, don’t look like that, you’ll be saved. Every person in this house almost flunked out of law school in their first year. It’s not hard to see why; they had broads on the brain. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a first-year law student. I don’t suppose that’s your problem?
Brooks: No, no. I’m married.
Moss: Well, the vote’s split on that, but I’ve saved all kinds. I moved in here and saved all these dum-dums. They’ll all graduate, all from Harvard. I give them a little lecture before each exam. They go out and take it on their own. They remember things for a day or two. They’re not stupid. Did you bring any samples of your work?
Brooks: Yeah, I brought some notes…
Moss: Notes don’t mean a thing. Take this down. Imagine an old woman comes to dinner with you. While you are mixing her drink, she slips on an ice cube, slides across the room smashing into your new breakfast table, demolishing it and killing herself. After you’ve cleaned her up off the floor you discover a statute which says homeowners must keep their land free of dangerous ice, especially but not exclusively ice on their sidewalks. And you find out the old lady suffered from dropsy a falling sickness. So you are sued on two accounts. The one relying on the statute and the other ordinary negligence. Can they recover from you for having caused the old lady’s death? Can you recover the price of the breakfast table from the old bag’s estate? Write out an answer. Take half an hour to do it. No help from your friend. Come back a month before exams, and we’ll go over it together. Don’t worry. There’s no possibility of error in my analysis.

…

Hart: My mind is really in his. I know what he is saying before he says it. I am three questions ahead. I am having a true Socratic experience.
Susan: Three questions ahead, Hart? You’re only three answers ahead.

…

Susan: They finally got you, Hart, they sucked all that Midwestern charm right out of you. Look, he’s got you scared to death. You’re going to pass, because you’re the kind the law school wants. You’ll get your diploma, your piece of paper that is no different than this [holding up a roll of toilet paper] and you can stick it in your silver box with all the other paper in your life. Your birth certificate, your driver’s license, your marriage license, your stock certificates…and your will.

…

Hart: They’re just grades, Kevin.
Brooks: You know better than that. It’s a number. It’s a letter. But it determines salaries and futures.

…

Kingsfield: Mr Hart, can you relate our case to the summary we’ve been building?
Hart: Thank you, I prefer to pass.
Kingsfield: What did you say?
Hart: Well, I have nothing relevant to say concerning the case.However, when I have something relevant to say, I shall raise my hand.
Kingsfield: Mister Hart, would you step down here?
[Hart walks to the podium]
Kingsfield: Here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.
Hart [turning back around as he walks toward the door]: You…are a son of a bitch, Kingsfield!
Kingsfield: Mr. Hart! That is the most intelligent thing you’ve said all day. You may take your seat.

…

Susan: Here’s your mail.
[hands Hart an envelope marked “GRADES ENCLOSED”]
Susan: I just got a letter from my father, something very interesting. My divorce is final. A piece of paper, and I’m free.
[pauses]
Susan: Aren’t you going to open your grades?[/b]

Nope. He turns the envelope containing them into an airplane and sends it flying out into the Atlantic ocean. But then, he doesn’t have to open it, does he? We already know that Kingsfield gave him an A.

[iambiguous]

By sheer coincidence John Houseman again. His last film.

But forget about the law here. This time the ideas revolve around the subjunctive cacaphony that is always, “how ought I to live my life?”.

Let’s start here: How many films are there where the leading character is the “director of undergraduate philosophy studies of a very fine women’s college”? Still: Ought she to focus on that or try to fix her flaccid marriage? Or, for that matter, flaccid life.

Turning fifty. It’s a personal experience of course but, for some, an ominous one. A time of Existential Doubt. The part ahead suddenly seems a lot shorter than the part behind. So the regrets become more palpable. And you are particularly keen on making the right choices now. But particularly keen as well on just how agonizing that can be. Especially as your options begin to thin. Or when you find [over and again] that you are faced with what seems to be only the lesser of two evils.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Woman
trailer: metacafe.com/watch/4188748/a … e_trailer/

ANOTHER WOMAN [1988]
Written and directed by Woody Allen.

[b]Marion [voiceover]: If someone had asked me when I reached my fifties to assess my life, I would have said that I had achieved a decent measure of fulfillment, both personally and professionally. Beyond that, I would say I don’t choose to delve.

…

Lynn: Don’t you know how Paul feels about you?
Miriam: Sure, we’ve always been very close.
Lynn: You’re deluding yourself. Of course in a way he idolizes you…but he also hates you.
Miriam: I’m sorry but I don’t accept that.
Lynn: You’re such a perceptive woman…how could you not understand his feelings?
Miriam: Look, I’m late. To tell you the truth I make it a practice to never get into these kinds of conversations. You know they’re fruitless and people just say things they always regret later.

…

Ken [to his ex-wife in a room filled with people]: Forgive me, I accept your condemnation.

…

Larry [to Miriam]: Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you are two of a kind.

…

Father: There are times when even an historian should not look at the past.

…

Miriam [narrating]: I thumbed through my mother’s edition of Rilke. When I was 16 I had done a paper on his poem about the panther and on the image that the panther saw as it stared out from its cage. And that image I concluded was death. Then I saw my mother’s favorite poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”. There were stains on the page that I believe were her tears. They fell across the last line: For here there is no place that does not see you/You must change your life.

…

Paul: Do you remember some years ago when I showed you something I’d written, do you remember what you said?
Marion: No, I don’t remember. I was probably just trying to be truthful.
Paul: Yes, I’m sure. You said, “This is overblown, it’s too emotional, it’s maudlin. Your dreams may be meaningful to you, but to the objective observer, it’s just so embarrassing.”
Marion: I said that?
Paul: Exactly your words. So I tried not to embarrass you any more.

…

[excerpt from Miriam’s dream]
Hope: Life.
Psychiatrist: Life?
Hope: The universe. The cruelty and injustice. The suffering of humanity. Illness. Aging. Death.
Psychiatrist: All very abstract. Don’t worry about humanity. Get your own life in order. We can continue with this tomorrow.
[Hope gets up and leaves the office]
Psychiatrist: What would you say she is suffering from.
Miriam [decisively]: Self-deception.
Psychiatrist: It’s a little general.
Miriam: But I don’t think she can part with her lies.
Psychiatrist: No? Too bad.
Miriam: Not that she doesn’t want to.
Psychiatrist: It is precisely that she doesn’t want to. When she wants to she will.
Miriam: It’s all happening so fast.
Psychiatrist: I have to hurry. I’m trying to prevent her from killing herself. [/b]

Woody’s world. A world where Hope’s list of abstractions is something he concerned himself with only, well, abstractly. It’s an apolitical world that existed only because it could exist—because the outside world never did intrude much at all. Or largely on his terms.

[b]Miriam [to Hope]: Fifty. I didn’t think anything of turning thirty. Everybody said I would. Then they said I’d be crushed turning forty…but they were wrong. I didn’t give it a second thought. Then they said I would be traumatized turning fifty. And they were right. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered my balance since turning fifty.

…

Marion [voiceover]: I closed the book, and felt this strange mixture of wistfulness and hope, and I wondered if a memory is something you have or something you’ve lost. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.[/b]

I know: Another blink.

[iambiguous]

If you are going to choose someone to play a “humanoid alien”, you can do worse than Ziggy Stardust. And wasn’t David Bowie up on the wall in Men In Black?

I only vaguely recall what this is all about. I watch it now mostly because it is fascinating just to take it in from time to time. The ambiance as it were. Especially after he meets Mary-Lou and starts accummulating all the televisions.

Just one more speculation about the relationship between “down here” and “up there”. And [of course] the role that the government [in conjunction with Big Business] will inevitably play in tweeking that to their own advantage.

ETs always seemed to make sense to me. Believing in them is not the same as believing in ghosts or in Gods. After all, given the estimated billions of potential earths “out there” it’s not hard to imagine that maybe an advanced technological civilization has “been here”. I haven’t seen any hard evidence actually demonstrating it, of course, but I don’t put it in the same category as, say, the “supernatural”.

IMDb

[b]Nicolas Roeg originally wanted to cast the 6-foot-10 author Michael Crichton as Thomas Jerome Newton.

James Sallis, writing in the The Boston Globe, describes “The Man Who Fell To Earth” as a Christian parable, not only about the corruption of an innocent being, but as being highly critical of the 1950s conventionalism which Tevis grew up with, along with environmental destruction and the Cold War.

David Bowie worked on a soundtrack for the film that was rejected. Many of the ideas he had for the soundtrack would later be utilized in his 1977 album ‘Low’.[/b]

Too bad. Low is one of my favorite albums. And it fits right into the “ambiance” I noted above.
Try it yourself: youtu.be/mkNmilE9ibk

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Wh … arth_(film
trailer: youtu.be/oKF5lHcJY9k

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH [1976]
Directed by Nicolas Roeg

Farnsworth: We’ve been together a long time now and I don’t see why you would want to sell off this division. I mean, if I owned a copyright on the Bible, I wouldn’t sell it to Random House.

Let’s just say he doesn’t see the bigger picture.

[b]Mary-Lou: You know Tommy, you’re a freak. I don’t mean that unkindly. I like freaks. And that’s why I like you.

…

Thomas: I can’t go to church.
Mary-Lou: Come on, Tommy, it’s a real good church. It makes me feel so good. It gives me something to believe in. Everybody needs to have a meaning in their lives. I mean when you look out at the sky, don’t you feel that somewhere out there there has got to be a God? Got to be…

…

Thomas: My interest is energy - transference of energy.

…

Thomas: Ask me…
Bryce: What?
Thomas: The question you’ve been wanting to ask ever since we met.
Bryce: Are you Lithuanian?

…

Thomas: The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything. It shows you everything about life for nothing, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it’s in the nature of television. Just waves in space.

…

Thomas: If I stay, I’ll die.
Mary-Lou: What’re you talking about? Take me with you, I’ll see you don’t die.
Thomas: I can’t stay.
[walks away from her]
Mary-Lou: You’re an alien![/b]

Actually she thinks his visa has expired!

[b]Newton: Well I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity.

…

Bryce: Don’t you feel bitter about it…everything?
Thomas: Bitter, no. We’d have probably treated you the same if you’d come over to our place.

…

Waiter: I think perhaps Mr. Newton has had enough, don’t you?
Bryce: I think…perhaps…you’re right.[/b]