philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

It is surely one of the more bizarre relationships one can imagine – the Church and the Mob. In other words, the Catholic Church and organized crime. And yet, among other things, they go way, way, way back. Probably at least as far back as the Borgias.

And, no doubt, for some, they will always be just two sides of the same thieving coin. Also, both organizations do have a lot of blood on their hands.

Anyway, you just can’t help but wonder: how did these [at times] vicious thugs manage to actually reconcile the two? And then to reconcile the reconciliation with a loving, just and merciful God? Still, if nothing else it shows us just how far a rationalization can be stretched if you simply start out with your own set of assumptions. And, sure, are able to write some really big checks. That seems to be a big motive here: That perhaps they can bribe their way into Heaven?

Now, some really did just use God and religion here as a device to mold and manipulate people – to bring about a set of circumstances more conducive to furthering their own material interests. On the other hand, others did to seem to approach it from the more traditional “spititual” angle. It was like they actually did believe in God and somehow managed to stuff Him [and themselves] into the Big Picture. And come out saved.

And then there’s that other thin line: the one between organized crime and Wall Street. After all, which institution has caused the most human suffering? Is it really even close? Michael does try to come as close as he possibly can to being “legitimate”. But how far away can the past ever be for someone like him?

Now, this is the Godfather film deemed by many as “not very good”. It managed only a 67% fresh rating at RT. On the other hand, it was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category. It’s just that, unlike the first two, it didn’t win.

IMDb

[b]Al Pacino was offered $5 million but wanted $7 million plus profits from gross to reprise his role as Michael. Francis Ford Coppola refused and threatened to rewrite the script by starting off with Michael’s funeral sequence instead of the film’s introduction. Pacino agreed to the $5-million offer.

After the argument between Michael Corleone and the members of the Vatican, he leaves the building, saying, “We’re back with the Borgias”. Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather (1972), later wrote a book about the Borgias called ‘The Family’. It was later revealed, during the broadcast of the television series The Borgias (2011), that the Borgias were the original inspiration for the Corleones. Vito was based on Rodrigo Borgia, AKA Pope Alexander VI. Michael was based on Cesare Borgia, Santino on Juan Borgia, Fredo on Gioffre Borgia, and Connie on Lucrezia Borgia.[/b]

FAQ IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0099674/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Part_III
trailer: youtu.be/kCAcWDDPdNY

THE GODFATHER PART III [1990]
Written in part and directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Michael [voiceover]: My dear children: It is now better than several years since I moved to New York, and I haven’t seen you as much as I would like to. I hope you will come to the ceremony of papal honors given for my charitable work. The only wealth in this world is children; more than all the money, power on earth, you are my treasure.

Michael Corleone and the Pope. What did you expect, the Devil?

Cardinal: Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners. Almighty God, bless the insignia of Saint Sebastian the Martyr, that it may contribute to the sacredness of him to whom it is given. Do you, Michael, promise to be faithful to the noble purposes of this Order, to have a special care for the poor, the needy and those who are ill?
Michael: I do so promise.
Cardinal: May the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you forever.

I’m sorry, but, come on. Or maybe it has something to do with this:

Mary: Archbishop Gilday, here is a check for 100 million dollars for the poor of Sicily, in the name of Vito Corleone. Don’t spend it all in one place.

At, for example, the Vatican:

[b]Archbishop Gilday: Michael…You’ve done a wonderful thing for Sicily.
Michael: Let’s hope that the money gets to the people who need it.

…

Michael: What’s wrong with being a lawyer?
Kay: Nothing, except he doesn’t want it. He loves music he wants his life to be in music.
Michael: Well, music is great. I love music but he should finish what he started. Anthony.
Anthony: I’m going my own way.
Michael: Your own way.
Anthony: Uh-huh.
Michael: Professional singer.
Anthony: That’s right.
Michael: And what happens if you fail.
Anthony: I won’t fail.
Michael: Men always believe that. With a law degree you’re taking on insurance. After that you can do anything you want. You can work for me.
Anthony: I will never work for you. I have bad memories.
Michael: All families have bad memories.
Anthony: I will always be your son, but I will never have anything to do with your business.
Michael: Anthony, finish the law degree.
Anthony: No.
[Anthony leaves]
Kay: That he got from you. That “no.”
Michael: You could have helped me, Kay. You could have helped me to convince him.
Kay: Convince him of what?
Michael: He throws his life away. He throws greatness away!
Kay: This is greatness? You know, Michael, now that you’re so respectable I think you’re more dangerous than you ever were. In fact, I preferred you when you were just a common Mafia hood.

…

Kay: Tony knows you killed Fredo.
Michael: Why did you come here?
Kay: I came here to protect my son. I didn’t come here to see you disguised by your church. I thought that was a shameful ceremony.
Michael: I spent my life protecting my son. I spent my life protecting my family!
Kay: Let’s be reasonable here, Michael. I mean, that’s your big thing, isn’t it? Reason backed up by murder.
Michael: Oh, God, you hate me. You hate me.
Kay: No, I don’t hate you, Michael. I dread you.

…

Dominic: The Order of Saint Sebastian is one of the highest honors the Church awards. It was first granted by Pope…
Reporter: What about Mr. Corleone’s connections with gambling?
Dominic: The press kits have…
Reporter: And involvement with the underworld?
Dominic: Cut the crap. The Pope - the Holy Father himself - has this very day blessed Michael Corleone; and you think you know better than the Pope?

…

Vincent: Who’s your father?
Mary: I’ll give you a hint. He’s Italian.

…

Don Altobello: My duty to God is clear. I have a special favour to ask of you. Can I attach my name to the Vito Corleone Foundation, so that you and I can be joined in name and spirit? One million dollars.
Michael: A lot of money…
Don Altobello: Godfather.
Michael: Don Altobello, you have such a heart.

…

Vincent [after taking a chunk out of Zaza’a ear]: Uncle Michael, listen - I know you’re into banks and Wall Street, but everyone knows you’re the final word, you’re like the Supreme Court. All I want to do is protect you from these guys and your lawyers can’t do that.

…

Grace [to Vincent]: You got a cat?

…

Vincent [he has a gun on one of Zaza’s hitmen and is talking to the other]: Wait a minute, don’t do anything, just watch. I’m going to show you something, just watch, OK?
[he shoots the one he is holding…the other one releases Grace]
Vincent: All right, just relax. Now, tell me; who sent you?
Hired Killer [still in shock]: Joey, Joey Zaza. He sent us to kill you.
Vincent: Thanks.
[he shoots him dead]

…

Cardinal: Don Corleone, I need your help. And not just to light a little candle. My gift was to be able to persuade people to give to the Holy Church. Then Rome decides to put me in charge of the Vatican Bank. But I was never a true banker. Mea culpa. I trusted my friends.
Michael: Friendship and money…Oil and water.

…

Cardinal: If only prayer could pay off our 700 million dollar deficit.
Michael: 769 million…
[pause]
Michael: The Church owns 25 percent of a large corporation: immobiliare. You know the one I mean?
B.J.: Largest landlord on Earth. Real estate worth six billion dollars.
Cardinal: That’s true.
Michael: And the Vatican vote is necessary for control.
Cardinal: No, you’re mistaken. This isn’t a question of one person deciding, one deciding vote. This is like any other company. We have directors and very old rules. The Pope himself would have to approve you.
Michael: We’ve sold the casinos. All businesses having to do with gambling. We have no interests or investments in anything illegitimate.
B.J.: The Corleones are prepared to deposit 500 million dollars in the Vatican Bank when Mr. Corleone receives majority control of immobiliare.
Michael: Immobiliare could be something new. A European conglomerate. Few families have control of such a company.
Cardinal: It seems that, in today’s world, the power to absolve debt is greater than the power of forgiveness. 600 million dollars.
Michael: Don’t overestimate the power of forgiveness.
Cardinal: Don Corleone, this deal with immobiliare can make you one of the richest men in the world. [/b]

Think of it as a fictionalized rendition of this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societ%C3% … mmobiliare

Don Altobello: Your old partners are grateful for the money you made them. They worship you…but their hearts are broken, because they think you abandoned them. They want to share your deal on immobiliare, to be a family again. It can purify their money.
Michael: This I cannot do. Immobiliare must be legitimate.

And make him the richest man in the world

[b]Michael: We’re back with the Borgias!

…

Michael [to Vincient of Joey Zaza]: Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.

…

Michael: You all know Joey Zasa. He is, I admit, an important man. His picture is on the cover of the New York Times magazine. He gets the Esquire Magazine award for the best-dressed gangster. The newspapers praise him because he hires Blacks, which shows he has a good heart. He is famous. Who knows? Maybe one day he’ll make all of you popular.
Joey: It’s true. I make more of a “bella figura”. That is my nature. But I also want to make a move into legitimate enterprises. I’d like a little pin from the Pope.

…

Joey [to the Five Families dons]: I say to all of you: I have been treated this day with no respect. I’ve earned you all money. I’ve made you rich and I asked for little. Good. You will not give, so I’ll take! As for Don Corleone, he makes it very clear to me today that he is my enemy. You must choose between us. [/b]

But don’t take too long:

[b]Vincent [to Michael]: It’s a hit! It’s a hit! Let’s go! Let’s get out of here! Move!

…

Michael: Joey Zasa would never pull something like this without the backing. He’s just muscle. He doesn’t have the wit for that helicopter attack. He doesn’t even have the ambition to wipe out the whole Commission.
Vincent [enraged]: I say we hit back and take Zasa out!!!
Michael [whispering into his ear]: Never let anyone know what you’re thinking.

…

Michael [fiercely]: Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in.

…

Michael: Vincenzo…When they come, they’ll come at what you love.

…

Don Altobello: Michael…treachery is everywhere.
Michael: You still have your fingers on the strings, even now.

…

Michael: I want you to do something for me. It’s dangerous.
Vincent: Good. I’m in. What do you need?
Michael: I want you to sell your soul to Don Altobello. To betray me.
Vincent: He’d never believe me.
Michael: That depends. I have an idea.

…

Vincent: Don Lucchesi, you are a man of finance and politics. These things I don’t understand.
Don Lucchesi: You understand guns?
Vincent: Yes.
Don Lucchesi: Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

…

Michael: Only Lucchesi can reach between these two worlds. “Our ships must all sail in the same direction”… Italian politics have had these men for centuries. They are the true Mafia.
B.J.: The Archbishop and the Vatican Bank, that’s the big problem.
Miachael: They’re the same problem. B.J., they’re connected. The Archbishop has powerful friends. They totally protect him. Is there someone in the Church we can turn to? Someone we can tell our problem to?
Don Bendino: Cardinal Lamberto. A wise and good man…very influential. He will see you. [/b]

Imagine being a fly on the wall when the folks from the Vatican discussed this film.

[b]Michael [to Cardinal Lamberto]: I trusted this business arrangement with the Archbishop. I trusted him. I was sure his honesty was beyond a doubt. But, as you see, I’m now the victim of a swindle. He’s stalling me. Vast monies have gone to people in high political places and the Vatican Bank is the guarantor.

…

Cardinal Lamberto: I hear the confessions of my own priests here. Sometimes the desire to confess is overwhelming, and we must seize the moment.
Michael: What is the point of confessing if I don’t repent?
Cardinal Lamberto: I hear you are a practical man. What have you got to lose?[/b]

Michael confesses:

[b]Michael: I, uh, betrayed my wife. I betrayed myself. I’ve killed men, and I ordered men to be killed. No, it’s useless. I killed…I ordered the death of my brother; he injured me. I killed my mother’s son. I killed my father’s son.
[Michael breaks down in tears]
Cardinal Lamberto: Your sins are terrible, and it is just that you suffer. Your life could be redeemed, but I know that you don’t believe that.

…

Michael: Connie…All my life I’ve kept trying to go up in society. To where everything higher up was legal, straight. But the higher I go, the more crooked it becomes. Where the hell does it end? They’ve been killing each other for centuries here. For money, for pride, for family. To keep from becoming the slaves of the rich pezzi da novanta. I made confession, Connie. I confessed my sins.
Connie [surprised]: Why? That’s not like you. You don’t have to confess your sins to a stranger.
Michael: It was the man. He’s a good man. A true priest. He can change things.

…

Don Altobello: You are my ‘ace in the hole,’ as we say in America. I have a stone in my shoe. You can remove it.
Mosca: Only one stone?
Don Altobello [regarding Michael]: It’s dangerous. A famous man. You will have to take precautions.
Mosca: Tell me what to do. Then I will tell you my price.

…

Kay: I see you still have AI Neri. Why?
Michael: I need him. He helps me get in and out of the car. He carries my briefcase.
Kay: You’re still a liar, Michael.
Michael: Let me show you Sicily, the real Sicily. So you’ll understand the family history.
Kay: I think I understand it more than enough.

…

Kay [to Michael]: Honor, huh?

…

Michael: I want you to forgive me.
Kay: For what?
Michael: Everything.
Kay: Oh, like God?
Michael: No, I need something a little closer.

…

Kay [after she and Michael learn that Don Tommasino has been killed…that his death must be avenged]: It never ends…

…

From a newscast: Frederick Keinszig, known as “God’s Banker”, has been reported missing. He was last seen leaving the Rome offices of Vatican owned immobiliare. Also missing was a large sum of money and several documents…His absence casts further suspicion on the dealings of the Vatican Bank. For several years, the bank and its companies have been the object of allegations of disreputable business practices.[/b]

Insterspersed between the reports we see Cardinal Gilday on the phone with Keinsig. And then with Don Lucchesi. He informs Lucchesi that “this Pope has very different ideas from the last one”.

Michael [kneeling alone in a room before the corpse of Don Tommasino in a coffin]: Goodbye my old friend. You could have lived a little longer, I could be closer to my dream. You were so loved, Don Tommasino. Why was I so feared, and you so loved? What was it? I was no less honorable. I wanted to do good. What betrayed me? My mind? My heart? Why do I condemn myself so? I swear, on the lives of my children: Give me a chance to redeem myself, and I will sin, no more.

What do you say, God?

[b]Michael: You look pale. Bad news? Tell me right away.
Vincent: It’s not just a bad banking deal. These guys are butchers.
Michael: What guys?
Vincent: Lucchesi. He controls all of them: Altobello, the Archbishop…others higher up, P2 maybe. They’re running things.
Michael: I’m in their way.
Vincent: He’s hired an assassin to kill you. A Sicilian. I don’t know his name. But they say he never fails.
Michael: Then no one is safe.

…

Michael: Nephew…from this moment on…call yourself Vincent Corleone.[/b]

The new Don.

[b]B.J.: We’ve just got the word. The Pope has ratified the immobiliare deal. We’ve won. Congratulations.
Michael: Strange how things work.
B.J.: The Pope’s doing exactly what you said he’d do, he’s cleaning house.
Michael: He should be careful. It’s dangerous to be an honest man.

…

Don Altobello [To Connie]: You’re so thin. You eat it.

…

Mary: I’ll always love you.
[long pause]
Vincent: Love somebody else.

…

Vincent [voiceover]: Tonight the Corleone family settles its accounts. Keinszig…That little Swiss banker fuck. He’s been swindling everyone from the beginning. Fuck him. Don Lucchesi, my friend. Calo will pay him a visit at his home. Neri will take a train to Rome. Light a candle for the Archbishop.[/b]

And one for the Pope too.

Calo: You have lost the faith of the people.
Don Lucchesi: He who builds on the people builds on mud. And Michael Corleone’s message? Calo: It’s very important. I must whisper it in your ear.
Bodyguard: He’s clean.
Calo: Power wears out those who don’t have it.
[Calo stabs him with Lucchesi’s own glasses]

And then Mary dies.
Meanwhile, Sofia still had the Golden Raspberrys to endure.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism and the will to power: a love story.

Or it can be twisted into this by those who despise both. Which is often what you will bump into whenever a film narrative gets around to the “philosophical implications” of these two characters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb

As with Compulsion [above] and Swoon.

No doubt the intellectually challenged folks might overlook this part altogether. Or the arguments relating to “free will”. For them it simply comes down to the miscreants getting caught; and then on to how [cleverly] Jimmy Stewart manages to do it. In other words, it’s just another Hitchcock “thriller” to them.

In fact, much of the controversy that swirled about the film revolved not around such weighty “intellectual” concerns as these, but around whether or not the two main characters might be construed to be gay.

Or the part about how foul these particular “ubermen” are. Brandon in particular. He displays considerably more “will” than Phillip. And he veritably oozes the sort of narcissistic arragance – a sterile “intellectualism” – that can be particularly grating on many lesser mortals. You perhaps.

Of course it was Phillip who actually used the rope to strangle him.

On the other hand, Rupert Cadell is meant to embody all of this nasty business “theoretically”. He is here to point out the obvious: that such “philosophical speculation” is not to be confused with actual human reality. To wit: That he wouldn’t really knock off an “inferior”. In fact, he never truly grasped just how ghastly his philosophy was until he opened that chest…

IMDb

[b]The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four other pictures of the same period) were bought back by Alfred Hitchcock and left as part of his legacy to his daughter Patricia Hitchcock. They’ve been known for long as the infamous “5 lost Hitchcocks” amongst film buffs, and were re-released in theatres around 1984 after a 30-year absence. The others are Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble with Harry, and Vertigo.

The film was banned in a number of American cities because of the implied homosexuality of Phillip and Brandon. It was considered as Alfred Hitchcock’s most controversial film when it was released in 1948. Several American theaters banned it upon release.

Screenwriter Arthur Laurents claims that the actress that played the maid used to be treated like one by the other actors, while shooting. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(film
trailer: youtu.be/8xkQoH8QbVs

ROPE [1948]
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

[b]Brandon [to Phillip]: Open it.

…

Brandon: Pity we couldn’t have done it with the curtains open in the bright sunlight. Well, we can’t have everything, can we? We did do it in daytime.

…

Brandon [to Phillip…but more to himself]: It’s a museum piece now. We really should preserve it for posterity, except, it’s such good crystal and I’d hate to break up the set. Out of this, David Kentley had his last drink. It should have been ginger ale, or even beer. I’ve always thought that it was out of character for David to drink anything as corrupt as Whiskey.
Phillip: Out of character for him to be murdered, too.
Brandon: Yes, wasn’t it? Good Americans usually die young on the battlefield. Well, the Davids of this world merely occupy space, which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect murder. 'Course, he was a Harvard undergraduate. That might make it justifiable homicide.
Phillip [less amused by it all]: He’s dead and we’ve killed him.

…

Brandon [to Phillip]: I’ve always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art, too. The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create.

…

Brandon [again, more to himself]: Phillip, do you realise we’ve actually done it, exactly as we planned And not a single thing has gone wrong. It was perfect.
Phillip: Yes.
Brandon: An immaculate murder! We’ve killed for the sake of danger and for the sake of killing. We’re alive, truly and wonderfully alive!

…

Brandon: You aren’t frightened any more, are you Phillip? Neither of us can have fear. That’s the difference between us and them. They talk about committing the perfect crime but don’t do it.

…

Phillip: Brandon, how did you feel?
Brandon: When?
Phillip: During it.
Brandon: I don’t know, really. I don’t remember feeling very much of anything, until his body went limp and I knew it was over.
Phillip: And then?
Brandon: Then I felt tremendously exhilarated!

…

Phillip: You don’t think the party’s a mistake?
Brandon: No, it’s the finishing touch to our work. It’s more. It’s the signature of the artists. Not having it would be like, uh…
Phillip: Painting the picture and not hanging it?
Brandon: That’s not a good choice of words.
Phillip: It may end up too choice, thanks to the party.
Brandon: Oh, rot. This party will be the most exciting ever given. Oh, they’re a dull crew. The Kentleys couldn’t be duller if they tried, but we did have to have them. After all, they are David’s mother and father.

…

Phillip [watching Brandon put the candles on the trunk]: What the devil are you doing?
Brandon: Making our work of art a masterpiece.

…

Brandon: We agreed there was only one crime we could commit, that of making a mistake. Being weak is a mistake.
Phillip: Because it’s being human?
Brandon: Because it’s being ordinary.

…

Phillip: Of all the people on this Earth, Rupert Cadell is the one man likely to suspect.
Brandon: He’s the one man who might appreciate this from our angle, the artistic one. That’s what’s exciting.

…

Brandon: I once thought of inviting him to join us.
Phillip: Why didn’t you? The more the merrier.
Brandon: He hasn’t the nerve. Oh, intellectually, he could’ve come along. He’s brilliant. But he’s a little too fastidious. He could’ve invented and admired it but he never could have acted. That’s where we’re superior. We have courage. Rupert doesn’t.

…

Brandon: Rupert only publishes books he likes, usually philosophy.
Janet: Oh. Small print, big words, no sales.
Brandon: Rupert’s extremely radical. Do you know that he selects his books on the assumption that people not only can read but actually can think.

…

Kenneth: Rupert used to tell you the weirdest things.
Janet: Really? What sort of things?
Brandon: I suppose Kenneth means Rupert’s impatience with social conventions. For example, he thinks murder is a crime for most men, but…
Phillip: …a privilege for the few.

…

Rupert: Brandon’s spoken of you.
Janet: Did he do me justice?
Rupert: Do you deserve justice?

…

Rupert [Phillip and Brandon have been arguing about strangling chickens]: Personally, I think a chicken is as good a reason for murder as a blonde, a mattress full of dollar bills or any of the customary, unimaginative reasons.
Janet: Well, now, you don’t really approve of murder, Rupert? If I may?
Rupert: You may…and I do. Think of the problems it would solve: unemployment, poverty, standing in line for theatre tickets…

…

Rupert: After all, murder is - or should be - an art. Not one of the ‘seven lively’, perhaps, but an art nevertheless. And, as such, the privilege of committing it should be reserved for those few who are really superior individuals.
Brandon: And the victims inferior beings whose lives are unimportant anyway.
Rupert: Obviously. Now, mind you, I don’t hold with the extremists who feel that there should be open season for murder all year round. No, personally, I would prefer to have…“Cut a Throat Week”… or, uh, “Strangulation Day”.

…

Mr. Kenneth: You’re not serious about these theories.
Brandon: Of course he is.
Mr. Kenneth: You’re both pulling my leg.
Brandon: No. Why do you think that?
Mr. Kenneth: The notion that murder is an art which superior beings should practice -
Rupert: In season!
Mr. Kenneth: Now I know you’re not serious.
Rupert: l’m a very serious fellow.
Mr. Kenneth: Then may I ask who is to decide if a human being is inferior, and is therefore a suitable victim for murder?
Brandon: The privileged few who commit it.
Mr. Kenneth: And just who might they be?
Brandon: Oh, myself, Phillip…possibly Rupert.
Rupert: l’m sorry, Kenneth, you’re out.
Mr. Kenneth: Gentlemen, I’m serious.
Brandon: And so are we, Mr Kentley. The few are those men of such intellectual and cultural superiority that they’re above the traditional moral concepts. Good and evil, right and wrong were invented for the ordinary average man, the inferior man, because he needs them.
Mr. Kenneth: So you agree with Nietzsche and his theory of the superman.
Brandon: Yes, I do.
Mr. Kenneth: So did Hitler.
Brandon: Hitler was a paranoid savage. His supermen, all fascist supermen were brainless murderers. I’d hang any who were left. But then, you see, I’d hang them first for being stupid. I’d hang all incompetents and fools. There are far too many in the world.
Mr. Kenneth: Then hang me. I must be stupid, because I don’t know if you’re serious or not. In any case, I’d rather not hear any more of your, forgive me, contempt, for humanity, and for the standards of a world that I believe is civilised.[/b]

Admit it: You don’t often come upon an exchange like this in a Hitchcock film.

[b]Rupert: Uh, Brandon, you were pushing your point rather hard. You aren’t planning to do away with a few inferiors, by any chance?
Brandon: I’m a creature of whim. Who knows?

…

Mrs. Atwater [the astrologer]: Do you know when I was a girl I used to read quite a bit.
Brandon: We all do strange things in our childhood.

…

Phillip: Alright, Rupert, I’ll ask you. What do you suspect?
Rupert: Where’s David, Phillip?
Phillip: I don’t know. Why?
Rupert: Brandon knows.
Phillip: Does he?
Rupert: Doesn’t he?
Phillip: Not that I know of.
Rupert: Oh, come now.
Phillip: I don’t. Why don’t you ask Brandon?
Rupert: I have, but he’s too busy manoeuvring the other two points of the triangle.

…

Rupert: You’re, uh, more than usually allergic to the truth tonight, Phillip. That’s the second time you haven’t told it.
Phillip: Thanks. When was the first?
Rupert: When you said that you’d never strangled a chicken.

…

Rupert: What’s wrong now, Phillip? Don’t you want Mr Kentley to have the books?
Phillip: No. I don’t care if he has them, I just…
Rupert: What? What?
Phillip: I just think it’s a clumsy way of tying them up, that’s all.[/b]

With a rope, in other words. With the rope.

[b]Phillip: Cat and mouse! Cat and mouse!
Brandon: Phillip!
Phillip: Which is the cat and which the mouse?

…

Phillip: He knows. He knows. He knows.
Brandon: Alright, easy. I’ll take care of it.
Phillip: No, you won’t. I’d just as soon kill you as kill him. Sooner. This is what you wanted, somebody else to know. Somebody else to see how brilliant you are, just like in school. I told you he’d find out, but you had to have him here![/b]

Then Rupert opens the chest…

Rupert: Oh no…no. I couldn’t believe it was true.
Brandon: Rupert, please Listen to me. Let me explain.
Rupert: Explain? Do you think you can explain that?
Brandon: Yes, to you, because you’ll understand. Rupert, remember the discussion we had before with Mr Kentley? Remember we said, ‘the lives of inferior beings are unimportant’? Remember we said, we’ve always said, you and I, that moral concepts of good and evil and right and wrong don’t hold for the intellectually superior. Remember, Rupert?
Rupert: Yes, I remember.
Brandon: That’s all we’ve done. That’s all Phillip and l have done. He and I have lived what you and I have talked. I knew you’d understand, because, don’t you see, you have to.
Rupert: Brandon. Brandon, till this very moment, this world and the people in it have always been dark and incomprehensible to me. I’ve tried to clear my way with logic and superior intellect. And you’ve thrown my own words right back in my face, Brandon. You were right, too. If nothing else, a man should stand by his words. But you’ve given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of! And you’ve tried to twist them into a cold, logical excuse for your ugly murder! Well, they never were that, Brandon, and you can’t make them that. There must have been something deep inside you from the very start that let you do this thing, but there’s always been something deep inside me that would never let me do it - and would never let me be a party to it.

This is the part about “free will”. Then [at last] he becomes, well, enlightened:

Rupert: Tonight you’ve made me ashamed of every concept I ever had of superior or inferior beings. But I thank you for that shame, because now I know that we are each of us a separate human being, Brandon, with the right to live and work and think as individuals, but with an obligation to the society we live in. By what right do you dare say that there’s a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you dare decide that that boy in there was inferior and therefore could be killed? Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave? I don’t know what you thought, but I know what you’ve done.
Brandon: What are you doing?
Rupert: It’s not what I’m going to do, Brandon. It’s what society is going to do. I don’t know what that will be, but I can guess, and I can help. You’re going to die, Brandon. Both of you. You are going to die.

[iambiguous]

Midnight Run? Now that’s entertainment!

And, truly, in this world, we need all of that we can get. So, trust me: this is one of the most entertaining movies ever made.

It’s a comedy. And by that I mean a really, really funny comedy. A “buddy flick”. A movie that revolves around male bonding. Well, they sort of bond. And the best of these are always about two men [and they are almost always men] you could not possibly imagine less likely to bond. Here it’s one with a decidedly white collar frame of mind and another with a decidedly blue collar frame of mind. In fact, the blue collar dude used to be a cop. On the other hand, the guy with the white collar used to work for the mob. Only he didn’t know it.

Oh, and this is one of those comedies with a heart. In other words, you come to understand how these men stumbled into the predicaments they were both in. And then you come to like them. And then you come to root for them. Before long you’re thinking that, yeah, they really do deserve a “happy ending”.

This movie is a gem. It’s not for nothing it received a 95% fresh rating at RT on 44 reviews. So, if you are ever in the mood to be wholly entertained [cinematically] you can’t go wrong here.

There is said to be a sequel to this film “in development”: imdb.com/title/tt1613061/?ref_=tt_rec_tt

IMDb

[b]The idea to have Jack Walsh continually checking his watch, and the whole back-story related to his habit, was all De Niro’s own idea.

The taxi driver, who snubs Jack in the last scene, played alongside De Niro in the movie Taxi Driver.

John Ashton said that Robert De Niro got into the part so much that during the fight scene on the train, De Niro actually hit him.

The famous “Litmus Configuration” scene was mostly improvised. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Run
trailer: youtu.be/B1_N28DA3gY

MIDNIGHT RUN [1988]
Directed by Martin Brest

Eddie: Look, I don’t wanna bring up the past, but isn’t it Serrano who ran you out of Chicago when he was runnin’ things then?
Jack: He didn’t run me out.
Eddie: Right. You gave up bein’ a cop to do this shit?
Jack: All right, what’s the point?
Eddie: The point, Jack? I bailed out the accountant. I didn’t know who he was at the time. Had I known, there was no way I would’ve put up the bond. It’s only a matter of time before Serrano vanishes this guy from the planet and I’m out $450.000.
Jack: You’re out $450.000 on this guy?
Eddie: No, because I got you. You’re the best. You’ll find him and bring him back.
Jack: How do you know the Duke is still alive?
Eddie: Because this guy is crazy. He sends postcards to Serrano tellin’ him what a great time he’s havin’ with his money.

That’s the set-up.

[b]Jack: I can’t keep you cuffed on a commercial flight, and I gotta check my gun with my luggage, but you fuck with me once and I’m gonna break your neck.
Jon: I can’t fly.
Jack: What?
Jon: You heard me, I can’t fly.
Jack: No, no, no. You’re going to have to do better than that, pal.
Jon: No, I don’t have to do better than that, because it’s the truth, I can’t fly. I suffer from aviaphobia.
Jack: What does that mean?
Jon: It means I can’t fly. I also suffer from acrophobia and claustrophobia.
Jack: I’ll tell you what: if you don’t cooperate, you’re gonna suffer from “fistophobia”.

…

Airline Pilot: Can I help you guys?
Mosely: Special Agent Mosely, FBI.
Airline Pilot: Mosley? Are all you guys named Mosely?
Mosley: What the hell are you talking about?
Pilot: You’re here to pick up a prisoner.
Mosley: How did you know that?
Pilot: He was afraid to fly, so he got off the plane. He left with an Agent Mosely.
FBI agent: Sir, that must mean Walsh has your identification.

…

Serrano [to Joey on the phone]: Is this moron number one? Put moron number two on the phone.

…

Eddie: Jerry, how the hell could he miss the goddamn plane? He called from the airport! All right. It’s time to bring in Marvin. Call him. He’s in Pittsburgh.
Jerry: Marvin Dorfler?
Eddie: Yeah, Dorfler. Under “D” in the Rolodex for “jerk”.

…

Jon: Familiar with the word arteriosclerosis? Cholesterol? If you want, I’ll outline a complete balanced diet for you.
Jack: Well, mail it to me from “C” block.
Jon: Why would you eat that?
Jack: Why? 'Cause it tastes good.
Jon: But it’s not good for you.
Jack: I’m aware of that.
Jon: Why do something that you know is not good for you?
Jack: Because I don’t think about it.
Jon: Well, that’s living in denial.
Jack: Living in denial?
Jon: Yeah.
Jack: I’m aware of that.
Jon: So you’re aware of all your behavior yet you continue to do things that aren’t good for you. That sounds sort of foolish. Don’t you think, Jack?[/b]

Ah, but then:

[b]Jack: No. Stealing $15 million from Jimmy Serrano sounds foolish.
Jon: I didn’t think I’d get caught.
Jack: Now, that’s livin’ in denial.
Jon: I’m aware of that.
Jack: So you’re aware of your behavior. Yet you continue to do things that aren’t good for you. Sounds foolish to me. Don’t you think?

…

Jon: But taking $15 million in mob money and giving it to charity was good for a lot of people.
Jack: So you pissed off a mafioso killer just to be loved by fuckin’ strangers. That makes a lot of sense.
Jon: Don’t you want to be loved?
Jack: There are lots of people who love me.
Jon: Really? Who?

…

Jack: I didn’t do this then.
Jon: What did you do?
Jack: I was a cop.
Jon: You were a cop in Chicago? Then you must know about Jimmy Serrano.

…

Jon: Two dollars? That’s all you’re leaving is a two dollar tip?
Jack: That’s fifteen percent.
Jon: No, that’s thirteen percent. These people depend on tips for a living!

…

Mosely: Where’s Jack Walsh?
Train Porter: He got off with the other guy two or three stops ago. His real name’s Mosely.
Mosely [shouting in a sudden outburst of frustration]: I’m Mosely!

…

Jon: Did she hurt you, Jack?
Jack: Yeah, she did.
Jon: I’m sorry.
Jack: What’re you sorry about?
Jon: I’m sorry you’re hurt.
Jack: I’m not hurt.
Jon: You just said you were hurt.
Jack: I’m not hurt.
Jon: I just asked you if you were hurt and you said “Yeah, I’m hurt.”
Jack: That’s because you made me say that.
Jon: Jack, you’re a grown man. You’re in control of your own words.
Jack: You’re goddamn right I am. Now here come two words for you: Shut the fuck up!!

…

Marvin: Son of a bitch stole my cigarettes.

…

Jon [to Jack]: Why aren’t you popular with the Chicago police department?

…

Jason [Gail’s son]: You don’t look like a criminal.
Jon: I’m a white-collar criminal.

…

Jack: I don’t need one of your lectures.
Gail: I’m not lecturing you. I’m trying to protect you! Ted is going to be home any minute. We’re all going out. It’s an important night for us.
Jack: What’s so important about tonight? Let me guess. Is it payoff night?
Gail: That’s it! Get out!
Jack: I’m in a big fuckin’ jam Gail! I need to borrow some money to get this guy to L.A., and I’m out of this miserable fuckin’ business forever! Can’t you understand that?
[his daughter Denise comes into the room…he hasn’t seen her in 9 years]
Jack: Denise? You got so big. What grade are you in now?
Denise: Eighth.
Jack: Are you in the eighth grade?

…

Denise [as Jack is about to drive away]: Wait. It isn’t much. About $180 baby-sitting money.
Jack: Oh, sweetheart, I can’t.
Denise: Take it. Please.
Jack: I can’t. I can’t, sweetheart.[/b]

That this really touching scene fits into the film so well speaks volumes regarding just how well it is made.

[b]Jack [on the phone]: Where am I? I’m in Boise, Idaho; no, no, no, wait a minute: I’m in Anchorage, Alaska. No, no, wait: I’m in Casper, Wyoming; I’m in the lobby of a Howard Johnson’s and I’m wearing a pink carnation.
Eddie: What the fuck are you talking about?!
Jack: I am not talking to you, I am talking to the other guys.
Eddie: What other guys?
Jack: Well, let me describe the scene to you: There are these guys, see? They’ve probably been up for like two days; they stink of B.O.; they have coffee breath; they’re constipated from sittin’ on their asses for so long; they’re sitting in a van, and they’re probably parked right up the street from your office. Eddie, YOUR PHONE IS TAPPED!

…

Jon: Why were you so unpopular with the Chicago Police Department? ‘Cause of your personality? What happened at your house? What was that all about? Your wife married a corrupt police officer? What was it all about?
Jack: What was it all about? That whole fuckin’ department was corrupt.
Jon: There’s good and bad everywhere, don’t you think?
Jack: Yeah, well, I’d say there’s bad everywhere. Good I don’t know about.

…

Jon: What happened to you?
Jack: I wouldn’t go on the payroll.
Jon: What payroll?
Jack: I was workin’ undercover. I was posted to this big heroin dealer in Chicago. Think he supplied the whole city. Took me a year just to get his confidence. Just when I was about to nail the son of a bitch, my fellow officers mysteriously discovered seven pounds of heroin in my house. So this big-time drug dealer gave me a choice: Get on the payroll like everybody else,get out of town or go to jail for 30 years. Well, I didn’t get on the payroll. And that’s why I do this. So when I find a criminal like you, I bring him in. I don’t worry about anybody takin’ a payoff. There is no anybody, just me.

…

Jon: What do you think Serrano is most afraid of?
Jack: Going cross-country with you!

…

Jack: Why didn’t you just leave Serrano alone? You don’t look like the kind of guy who would be involved in that situation.
Jon: Why didn’t you leave that heroin dealer alone? I was a mob accountant. I thought I worked in a legitimate firm. When I found out I was managing accounts who were friends for Serrano I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.
Jack: But you still took what didn’t belong to you.
Jon: How can you be on a mobster’s side?
Jack: I’m not on a mobster’s side?
Jon: You’re on his if you’re not on mine.
Jack: I’m not on anybody’s side. I got nothin’ to do with it.
Jon: You’ve got everything to do with it. You’re takin’ me to jail where you know I’ll be killed.

…

Jon: Did you read about me in the papers?
Jack: Yeah, I did.
Jon: Were you on my side then?|
Jack: Yeah, I was.
Jon: Then why aren’t you now?
Jack: Because now you’re in my way.
Jon: I’m in your way? You want the money for turning me in because that’s all you’re about. You’re just about the fuckin’ money.

…

Jack [to Marvin]: Looks like a package deal.

…

Jon [to Jack and Marvin]: You guys are the dumbest bounty hunters I have ever seen! You couldn’t even deliver a bottle of milk!

…

FBI agent [putting a note in Mosley’s hand]: This just came in.
Mosley: Is this gonna upset me?
Agent: I think it’s safe to say that.

…

Jack: What the hell kind of town is this?!

…

Jack: Fear of flying, you son of a bitch! Get back here, you son of a bitch! Get over here. Stop! Fear of flying, my ass! You son of a bitch, get out! You’re a goddamn pilot, you son of a bitch?!!
Jon: I didn’t feel it was appropriate to share that with you.

…

Jon: Steal their truck? You can’t steal their truck!
Jack: Shut up! You were about to steal their plane!

…

Jon: Jack, let’s be fair about this. You lied to me first! At the river…
Jack: What the…you lied to me first. You got some fuckin’ nerve!
Jon: No you lied to me first. At the river you…
Jack: YOU LIED TO ME FIRST!
Jon: Yes! Yes, I lied to you first, but you had no knowledge I was lying to you about my fear of flying at the river when you lied to me. So, as far as you knew, you lied to me first!

…

Jon [after Jack groans in pain]: What’s the matter?
Jack: I got an ulcer. Yeah, I’ve got a fuckin’ ulcer. All your bullshit started it bleeding.
Jon: You know why you have an ulcer? Because you have two emotions, silence and rage.

…

Jon: Would you describe what the last man who passed a $20 bill looked like.
Bartender: Thirty. Tall.
Jon: About six feet tall?
Bartender: Six-five.
Jon: Dark brown hair?
Bartender: Light colored.
Jon [to Jack]: Sounds like our man.
Jack: That’s him.

…

Jon: What’s the name of this establishment?
Red: Red’s Corner Bar.
Jon: Are you Red?
Red: Yes.
Jon: Do you dye your hair?
Red: No.
Jon: Why do they call you Red?
Red: It’s short for Redwood. My last name’s Wood.
Jon: What’s your first name?
Red: Bill.

…

Marvin [after Mosely takes his cigarettes again]: Why don’t you quit? It’d be cheaper for both of us.

…

Jon [on the freight train]: You ever had sex with an animal Jack? Remember those chickens on the Indian reservation? There were some good looking chickens there Jack. You know, between us…
Jack: Yeah, there were a couple there I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at.

…

Jon: What’s with you and that watch? You told me about your feelings for chickens. How private could the watch be? What’s the big secret?
Jack: Gail bought me this watch. It was the first thing she ever gave me. She bought it because I was always late at least a half an hour. So she bought it and set it ahead a half an hour so I’d never be late. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking we’ll wind up together again. I don’t know why I’m still hangin’ on, I’m still waitin’ around.
Jon: I don’t think she’s comin’ back.
Jack: I don’t either.
Jon: Sometimes you just have to let go. Get yourself a new watch.

…

Jon: You’re OK, Jack. I think under different circumstances you and I would…would probably still have hated each other!
[they both burst out laughing]

…

Jon: Where are we?
Jack: My guess is Arizona. We’ve been going west all night. I think we’re near home.
Jon [glumly]: I’m almost dead.
Jack: Look, Jon, the witness protection program isn’t so bad. They’ll give you a new name, a new life.
Jon: I won’t make it to any witness protection program.
Jack: You don’t know that.
Jon: I know that, and you know that. Serrano’s gonna get to me before I get to any witness protection program. Do me a favor. Don’t pretend you care about me. It really insults my intelligence. Let’s face it. The only important thing about me to you is getting your money.
Jack: Look, I’m tired of you making me out to be some thug whose only concern is a big chunk of change. Did you know that Serrano’s people offered me a million bucks for you?
Jon: Why don’t you go for the big money? You’re doing his work for him anyway.
Jack: You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I only reason I do this shit is because I wouldn’t work for that low-life asshole.
Jon: What does that mean?
Jack: Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.
Jon: Serrano is the heroin dealer you told me about in Chicago? Who owned your buddies and destroyed your life? That’s Serrano? That’s the guy that you’re takin’ me in for? That’s the guy that’s gonna kill me?
[pause]
Jon: I hope it’s a wonderful coffee shop, Jack.

…

Jon [to Jack after being pushed off the train]: Trains have regularly scheduled stops. The reason is 'cause people plan to get off the trains when they stop. That’s how, generally, people do it. They don’t throw each other off. That’s the purpose of having stops.

…

[Jack is hotwiring a truck]
Jon: Congratulations. Another crime.

…

Jon [to Jack]: I’m not the kind of guy that says, “I told you so”.

…

Jon [to Jack]: This is the kind of situation where something bad happens.

…

Jon [with the cops, Mosley, Serrano and Marvin in pursuit]: Where are we going?
Jack: You’ll find out when we get there. I’ve come too far. Too far. I’m too close.

…

Jack [spotting a car]: Here we go. Hello!
Marvin [in the car]: Am I lucky or am I just good?
Jack: Is that Marvin?
Marvin: Fuckin’ A, I’m the best.

…

Jon: Marvin, I have to tell ya, I have this very serious fear of flying.
Marvin: Yeah?
[he punches him in the head, knocking him out]
Marvin: Well, why don’t you just relax and sleep through it?

…

Jack: I know my rights. You owe me phone calls.
Mosely: What should be of paramount importance to you right now is not the phone calls, it’s the fact that you’re gonna spend ten years for impersonating a federal agent.
Jack: 10 years for impersonating a fed, uh?
Mosely: 10 years.
Jack: 10 years. How come no one’s after you?

…

Jack [screaming to Eddie on the phone]: You put Marvin on this case you fuckin’ piece of shit? You fucking, deceptive - You VERMIN! You SLIMEBALL in a SEA of PUS!

…

Eddie: You got five hours left. Can you bring the fuckin’ Duke in, yes or no?
Jack: I thought he’s bringin’ him.
Eddie: I just talked to fuckin’ Dorfler. He don’t have the Duke.
Jack: What?
Eddie: WHERE’S THE FUCKIN’ DUKE?!!
Jack [realizing what’s up]: I’ll talk to you later.

…

Jack [on the phone]: I got some of the Duke’s belongings, including computer disks telling of Serrano’s businesses, his money-laundering operations, everything. If I don’t get the Duke back in the next two hours I’m gonna turn those disks over to the Feds, do you hear me?
Tony: I ain’t gonna bother Jimmy with your bullshit.
Jack: You’re not? Fine. After he’s busted, I’ll make sure to let him know you knew beforehand. That’s two hours from now, McCarran Airport. You got that, moron? Have a nice day.

…

Mosley: Get a wire on this man.

…

Serrano [to Jon]: I’m finally in the presence of greatness, huh? The Duke. The guy that steals money from the scum of the earth and gives it to the unfortunates of the world. I wanted to meet you face-to-face. Did you actually think you were gonna steal my money and get away with it? I stopped by here to tell you two things. Number one is that you’re gonna die tonight. Number two, I’m gonna go home have a nice hot meal. I’m gonna find your wife, and I’m gonna kill her, too.

…

Serrano [to Jack]: Since we have this moment, there’s something I’ve meant to ask you. Doesn’t it bother you that another cop is fuckin’ your wife? Do you know they made this guy a captain? Can you imagine that? Go figure. Made him a captain.

…

Jack: SERRANO’S GOT THE DISKS! SERRANO’S GOT THE DISKS!!

…

Jack: We still got our deal?
Mosley: We got our deal.
Marvin: Wait a minute! What deal? Why the fuck does he get special treatment?
Jack: See you in L.A., Marvin.
Marvin: Watch your cigarettes with this guy, Jack.

…

Eddie [on phone]: Mascone Bail Bonds.
Jack: Hello, Eddie, where’s Jerry?
Eddie: Never mind Jerry. The Feds picked him up 20 minutes ago. I never trusted that guy. Where the hell are you?
Jack: Where am I? I’m at the airport. Guess who I’m with. I’m with the Duke.
Eddie: You got him! You got him, Jack! I love you!
Jack: Yeah. You wanna say hello?
Eddie: Yeah. Put him on.
Jon: Hello.
Eddie: Hello, you son of a bitch! We got you…you son of a bitch!
Jack: Now say good-bye, ya lying little piece of shit, because I’m lettin’ him go.
Eddie: Jack?!!

…

Jack [uncuffing Jon]: It would’ve been a nice coffee shop.
Jon: Oh, Geez…
Jack: I did what I wanted to do, Jon. I got you to L.A. before midnight.
Jon: I don’t know what to say.
Jack: Don’t say anything. Knowin’ you, you’ll make me wanna put those back on you.
Jon: Thanks.
Jack: No, Jon, thank you.
[Jack gives him his watch]
Jack: Something to remember our adventure by.

…

Jon [motioning Jack to come back over]: Jack.
Jack: This better be good.
Jon: This is good. This is very good. When I was making my getaway, I thought the FBl was closing in on me.
[he hands Jack a money belt]
Jon: Take it. I took some traveling money. Take it. It’s not a payoff. It’s a gift. You already let me go.
Jack: You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch.
Jon: I told you I had money.
Jack: I know you had money, but I didn’t know you had money.

…

Jack [looking in the belt]: How much is here?
Jon: Neighborhood of three-hundred-thousand
Jack: That’s a…that’s a very respectable neighborhood.

…

[Jack hails cab. When it pulls over he knocks on passenger side front window and driver rolls it down]
Jack: You wouldn’t have change for a thousand, would ya?
Cab Driver: Whatta ya, a comedian? Get outta here, you bum!
[Cab driver drives away]
Jack [zips up his coat and turns up the collar]: Looks like I’m walkin’.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This one has the law of unintended consequences written all over it. Also Murphy’s Law. Which is often the case when, for all practical purposes, folks start out with the best of intentions. Here they are judges. And they are confronted [over and over and over again] with some of the most heinous injustices imaginable. Only they don’t have to imagine it at all. And that is becasue these foul miscarriages of justice unfold within that legal oxymoron known as the “American criminal justice system”. And they are smack dab in the middle of it.

In other words, when you are a judge in “the system” you see these apalling inequities unfolding right in front of you. And it infuriates you. Especially those savage crimes that involve children.

So, you decide to do something about it. What? Well, you set up your own “courtroom”. And once you have decided that a guilty man has been set free, you exact your own…punishment.

What could go wrong? Right.

This is one of those film where you imagine a roomful of liberals and a roomful of conservatives watching it…and then putting them all in the same room to discuss it. Spittle [and maybe fists] will almost certainly start falling.

Philosophically, the film explores [in part] the relationship between “the law” and what some construe to be our “moral obligation” to behave in accordance with what is always deemed right or always deemed wrong. And if, in order that justice will prevail, this means taking the law into your own hands, so be it. As long you “just know” that the those you accuse really are guilty.

IMDb

[b]The film’s title is taken from a controversial English law court called the “Star Chamber” which was founded in 1487 by King Henry VII. This court sat at the Royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. The “Star Chamber” was so-called because the ceiling of the court where the judges met featured gold decorative stars. The court operated as a supplement to local justice processes where other courts of law could not for one reason or another enforce justice. This court took its name from another court also called the “Star Chamber” or “Starred Chamber” from the reign of King Edward II which functioned for meetings of the King’s Council.

The number of magistrates, judges and justices that sat on “The Star Chamber” was nine, the same number as the American Supreme Court.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber
trailer: youtu.be/OCe1pHqP06A

THE STAR CHAMBER [1983]
Written in part and directed by Peter Hyams

Defense lawyer: I move that all the evidence obtained by Detectives Mackay and Wiggan be ruled inadmissible in this case, dismissed immediately.
DA: On what grounds? They were meticulous in their procedure. They waited until the garbage can was emptied. Andujar waived his rights. On what grounds?
Defense lawyer: Your Honor, under the rule my client had a reasonable expectation to privacy. The police cannot search his garbage can without a warrant.
DA: They did that. They waited until the garbage can had been emptied.
Defense lawyer: However, they searched the scoop of the garbage truck. They did not wait until Mr. Andujar’s garbage had been mixed with the rest of the garbage in the truck thereby rendering it common garbage. As long as Mr. Andujar’s garbage was there by itself in that scoop…as long as that garbage hadn’t been mixed with other garbage in the body of the truck…the police could not search without a warrant.
DA: I don’t believe this.
Defense lawyer: There is ample precedent on this point, Your Honor…specifically People v. Krivda, uh…
Judge: I know the precedent, Mr. Karras. Thank you.
Defense lawyer: Since the gun was the grounds for the warrant and the evidence and the ensuing confession were the direct result of that warrant and that warrant was granted illegally because of the invasion of my client’s privacy. Your Honor, I have to ask you to rule all the evidence and the confession as tainted and inadmissible.
DA: This is not happening.
Judge: Mr. Hyatt, uh, I’m afraid he’s right. The evidence is not admissible.
DA: Your Honor, we have a man here who cold-bloodedly murdered five elderly women after robbing them of their welfare checks. We have the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it. We have thejewelry and the wallets of the victims in the defendant’s apartment. We have his full confession, freely given by him. And now you’re telling me that we don’t have a case because two cops at 6:00 in the morning searched the scoop of a garbage truck instead of waiting for some guy to pull a lever. Are you really going to tell me that?
Judge: I’m gonna tell you that if I allowed this evidence it would all be thrown out in the appellate court. I don’t like it any more than you do.
DA: This man is gonna go free? You’re gonna let him go?
Judge: I don’t have a choice, you understand that?
DA: No, your honor, I don’t.

See the problem? You can well understand why some folks might feel the need to exact their own extra-legal…remedy.

[b]Benjamin: You love to suffer. You wear it like one of them corduroy jackets with the patches on the sleeves. Me, I just don’t complain about it. I do something about it.
Steven: You do what? What do you do?

…

Newsman: The pretrial hearing of Lawrence Monk and Arthur Cooms is set to begin tomorrow. Monk and Cooms are accused of the mutilation and murder of 10-year-old Daniel Lewin. The District Attorney’s office has confirmed to Eyewitness News that the murder of the Lewin boy was part of a child-pornography ring in which small boys were kidnapped, drugged used in pornographic films and then murdered.[/b]

You can see where this is going: they get off on a “technicality”. They are guilty as sin but they walk. Or are they?

[b]DA: Your Honor, the principal piece of evidence is that shoe…a child’s sneaker that belonged to Daniel Lewin covered with Daniel Lewin’s blood. It’s the major link between the defendants and the crime. And if we aren’t allowed to present it the people may not have a strong enough case to secure a conviction. If Your Honor grants the motion to suppress that would be the same thing as dismissing this case.
Steven [the judge in the case]: The motion from the defense concerns itself with police procedure. There is a question here whether or not this was a proper search.
DA: Your Honor, this is a case involving the torturing the sexual molesting and the murder of a little boy. There is reason to believe that this case also involves similar horrors committed against other children.
Steven: I know how serious this is. Maybe you should have realized how serious it was when you presented your case. You’ve done fairly sloppy work here. You’ve hinged everything on a piece of evidence obtained in a shaky search and now you drop it in my lap. Terrific! I will not allow something that I know is gonna be overturned by the appellate court. Now, Mr. Hingle here is doing his job, I’m trying to do mine and I would suggest that you do yours a little bit better.

…

Steven [to Dr. Lewin, the murdered boy’s father]: I have to rule on a point of law that has nothing to do with these two defendants. It’s only concerned with how a particular piece of evidence was obtained.

…

Dr. Lewin: How can someone torture a child? How do you erase that sound from your head? Those two are creatures. They’re not human beings. Look at the photograph. That was my little boy, not a plaintiff or a statute. That is my little boy. He’s not a point of law. Look at the goddamn photograph!
Steven: I understand how you feel. I really do. But I only deal with the law.
Dr. Lewin: What about justice? Do you ever deal with that? Does that ever fit into this little crossword puzzle that you call the law? You’re so worried about the rights of those two monsters! What about my little Danny’s rights? You don’t escape so easily. You don’t run and hide so easy. You take this photograph and you look at it! That’s what this is all about. Nothing else. Nothing else.

…

Steven [to his wife]: :It’s not working anymore. All the catch phrases, all the bromides that get you through the day. It’s just not working anymore. I feel like I’m on the wrong side! Jesus Christ! It’s all upside-down. My first day in law school, I went to the library, you know? And there were all of those books, and they were tan and red and they had gold writing, and they smelled so good. It was…it was like I was looking at the truth right up there in all those rows. The truth. The law. You even got to say it in a deep voice…like you’re in, uh, some kind of echo chamber. “The law.” Nothing is right or wrong! It’s either the law or it’s not the law.
[pause]
Steven: Well, we got a problem here, because, uh…it’s…it’s not working anymore. It turns out that right and wrong count.

…

Steven [giving Lewin’s photograph of his dead son to his wife]: He’s Max’s age. The last thing he ever felt was torture. I got five women shot through the head. I got bodies piling up all around me. I’m passing out the ammunition. See, the bad guys they get hold of one of those books, they find something and…and I give 'em the prize. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t put there for them. It was put there for that little kid and the five women. But that doesn’t matter because they found it, and that’s the law.

…

Dr Lewin: I’m not upset, you know. I’m really not. I tried to do something. At least I tried to do something. My only regret is that I didn’t kill those two creatures. You want absolution? I’m not gonna give it to you. Try a priest.
Steven: No, I understand. As a man, I would have tried to kill 'em too. As a judge, I can’t.
Dr Lewin: Well, you don’t have to worry. You didn’t murder my son, so you’re covered. I take it that’s what you wanted to hear.
Steven: Maybe, yeah.
Dr Lewin: You did murder someone else’s son. You’re gonna have to deal with that pretty soon.
Steven: What are you talking about?
Dr Lewin: Didn’t you hear? Another little boy was tortured and murdered last night just like Danny. There’s another father that’s gonna have those sounds in his ears for the rest of his life. And you’re gonna have to face him and explain to him how you let those two go so they could murder his child. This one’s on you, Your Honor. This one you did. That boy would be alive if you hadn’t let 'em go. You go tell that father about your system. You give him the… the lecture on your precious justice. Save all the platitudes that you were gonna use on me. You use them on him. Better than that, use them on yourself. But don’t worry about me. I am really all right. I can look at that man. I tried to do something. You killed his son.

…

Benjamin: So the nine of us we became a court. Our own court of last resort. We review cases, the excruciating ones…the ones where it’s all been perverted. We make judgments. We carry out sentences.
Steven: I…I don’t believe this.
Benjamin: Time to get your fingernails dirty, kiddo. Someone has kidnapped justice and hidden it in the law. Now who’s better qualified than we are to find it?

…

Friend at party: Well, you must be feeling pretty relieved right now.
Steven: Why?
Friend: Well, you know, with what just happened with those child murderers.
Steven: What are you, uh, what are talking about?
Friend: It was on the news. Well, those two guys who everybody thought killed all those children the ones you let go and everybody criticized you for it, don’t you remember? Well, the cops just arrested three other men and these guys really did it. It was just on the news.[/b]

Uh-oh.

[b]Benjamin: We’ve tried to provide as many safeguards against something like this as possible. There’s always a risk of mistake. We have to weigh that risk against what we have all dedicated ourselves to accomplish. We think it’s worth it.
Steven: But Coons and Monk are not guilty. It’s not worth it. Nothing is worth it!
Fellow judge: Who the hell do you think you are coming on like the captain of the high school debating team? "It’s better that 10 guilty men go free rather than one innocent man go to the gas chamber. " That’s wonderful! You’ll win trophies with that one. The only trouble is it doesn’t work out that way. The 10 guilty men who go free will, in all probability, kill again. And so what you have then is at least 10 more innocent people killed.

…

Steven [to the judges]: I can’t help feeling that we’ve become them.

…

Steven [to Benjamin]: There’s a lot of nobility in this room. Must be the paneling. [/b]

[iambiguous]

The female villian. The movie rendition. And you can be reasonably sure it will involve aberrant sex of some sort. Meaning she will almost certainly be very, very beautiful. On the other hand, in the more conservative rendition, she will almost always embody in turn some sort of psychological affliction which involves abandoning the traditional roles set aside for her as a woman [usually around the hearth and the home] and going out into the world and, among other things, propagating evil. In other words, instead of children.

Here, every single female character of note is ominous in one manner or another. Of course, so is every single male character of note too. This is clearly the decadent, postmodern world – a world where everything seems to revolve around the gutter. It’s just that here the rats in the gutter have lots and lots of money and lots and lots of dope and lots and lots of perverted needs. On the other hand, in this decadent, postmodern world, one’s man’s perversion is another man’s raison d’être. It’s just that in this day and age that is now a viable option for women too. Well, the drop dead gorgeous femme fatales anyway.

In other words [it would seem] it is “feminism” that basically revolves around allowing women to be just like men. Narcissisitic scumbags by and large. And, let’s face it, you hardly ever come across films in which it is the other way around. Films like say Three Men and a Baby.

And then, by making this conniving and very, very cunning psychopath bi-sexual, they added yet another layer of controversy to all the others.

Also, it explores [if sensationally] the role that socio/psycho-pathology does in fact play in the minds of folks who view the world almost entirely from a narcissistic [or ativistic] frame of mind. There is just no reasoning with them about “good” and “evil”. And yet they are quite capable being reasonable [“normal”] in all other respects.

IMDb

[b]According to Sharon Stone, director Paul Verhoeven asked her to remove her underwear for the leg-crossing scene, as he said they were too bright and reflected at the camera. Stone agreed to do so under the assumption that her genitals weren’t visible. It was only at an early preview that Stone discovered Verhoeven chose to use this specific shot. Stone was mainly cross with Verhoeven for not discussing the matter with her beforehand, but decided to let the scene go without changes, as she felt this conformed with her movie character. However, Verhoeven’s version of the conflict is that he told Stone beforehand about the leg-crossing shot, as it was important for showing Catherine Tramell’s free-spirited nature and her constant drive to toy with people. Stone was reportedly excited about the idea and shot the scene. However, during the early preview, her agents supposedly disproved of the scene, fearing it would harm her future career. According to Verhoeven, Stone radically changed her mind about the shot and demanded that he remove it, which he ultimately refused.

So choreographed were the sex scenes that Sharon Stone referred to herself and Michael Douglas as “the horizontal Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the '90s”.

The San Francisco Police Department had to deploy 50 riot police at every location every day to deal with picketing gay and lesbian activists.

Gay rights activists were so against the way the gay characters were portrayed that they blocked the San Francisco set numerous times. Director Paul Verhoeven had to issue fake call sheets to trick the protesters into blocking unused locations. When the movie was released, the activists paraded around San Francisco theaters handing out flyers saying, “Catherine did it” to ruin the plot for moviegoers. This didn’t seem to have any impact at all, as the movie opened #1 on that same weekend and went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies of the year.

The role of Nick Curran was originally a lesbian cop and was written with Kathleen Turner in mind.

Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Ray Liotta and Patrick Swayze auditioned for the role of Detective Nick Curran.

Sharon Stone, when doing the interview circuit, was really annoyed by the fact that everyone always asked her how she felt about all the nudity, when she had real problems with the fact that her character killed someone on screen. When filming this sequence, a paramedic had to be on standby as she kept passing out, and suffered nightmares.

When it was first released, the film confused many audience members, who had wildly different impressions of who the killer really was. It wasn’t until the director and stars went public in interviews, telling the public who the killer was and where the clues could be found, that the debate about the ending finally was put to rest.

No body doubles were used in any of the sex scenes.

Sharon Stone was only offered the role of Catherine after 13 actresses had turned it down.

Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone had to wear genital pads during the sex scenes due to the AIDS epidemic.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0103772/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Instinct
trailer: youtu.be/wLGx5YT6sOg

BASIC INSTINCT [1992]
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

[b]Gus: I thought you said he was a rock and roll star.
Lt. Walker: He was a retired rock and roll star.
Capt. Talcott: A civic-minded, very respectable rock and roll star.
Gus: What’s that over there?
Nick: It looks like some civic-minded, very respectable cocaine to me, Gus.

…

Gus: Ain’t that cute? They got his and her Pig-assos.
Nick: I didn’t know you knew who Picasso was, Gus.
Gus: Sure I do. It says so right here.
Nick: Hers is bigger.

…

Nick: I love it. She’s got a hundred million bucks. She fucks fighters and rock and roll stars. And she’s got a degree in screwing with peoples’ heads.
Lt Walker: You forgot her degree in literature. She’s a writer. She published a novel last year under a pen name. Do you want to know what it’s about?
[they all stare at him]
Lt Walker: It’s about a retired rock and roll star who is murdered by his girlfriend.

…

Dr. Lamott: I see two possibilities. One. The person who wrote this book is your murderer and acted out the killing described in ritualistic, literal detail. Two. Someone who wants to do the person who wrote this book harm read the book and enacted the killing described to incriminate the writer.
Nick: What if the writer did it? What are we dealing with?
Dr. Lamott: You’re dealing with a devious, diabolical mind. This book must have been written at least six months, maybe years before it was published. That means the writer planned the crime, at least in the subconscious, back then. The fact that the writer carried it out indicates psychopathic obsessive behavior in terms not only of the killing itself but in terms of applied advance defense mechanism.
Gus: You know, Doc, sometimes I can’t tell shit from shinola, Doc. What was all that you just said?
Beth: She intended the book to be her best alibi.
Dr Lamott: Correct.
Beth: She’s going to say Do you think I’d be dumb enough to kill anyone in the exact way I’ve described in my book? I wouldn’t do that because I’d know I’d be a suspect.
Nick: So, what if it’s not the writer? What if it’s someone who read the book?
Dr. Lamott: Then you’re dealing then with someone so obsessed that he or she is willing to kill an irrelevant and innocent victim to place the blame on the person who wrote this book. We are talking about deep-seated, obsessional hatred; an utter lack of sense of proportion or perspective.

…

Corrigan: It won’t do any good bringing her in. She’ll come in with some superstar lawyer and get us all canned for wasting the taxpayers money. trailing behind her on a solid
Talcott: That’s exactly what she’ll do.
Nick: No she won’t.
[they look at him]
Nick: I don’t think she’s going to hide behind anybody. I don’t think she’s going to hide at all.
Talcott: Then she’s as crazy as you are, Curran.

…

Gus: You workin’ on another book?
Catherine: Yes I am.
Gus: It ust really be somehting makin’ stuff up all the time.
Catharine: Yeah, it teaches you to lie.
Gus: How’s that?
Catherine: You make it up, but it has to be believable. It’s called suspension of disbelief.

…

Nick: What’s your new book about?
Catherine: A detective. He falls for the wrong woman.
Nick: What happens to him?
Catherine: She kills him.

…

Correli: There’s no smoking in this building, Miss Tramell.
Catherine: What are you gonna do? Charge me with smoking?

…

Correli: Did you kill Mr Boz, Miss Tramell?
Catherine: I’d have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the way I described in my book. I’d be announcing myself as the killer. I’m not stupid.

…

Nick: You like playing games don’t you?
Catherine: I have a degree in psychology, it goes with the turf… Games are fun.

…

Nick: How did you feel when I told you Johnny Boz had died, that day at the beach?
Catherine: I felt somebody had read my book and was playing a game.
Nick: But you didn’t hurt.
Catherine: No.
Nick: Because you didn’t love him.
Catherine: That’s right.
Nick: Even though you were fucking him.
Catherine: You still get the pleasure.

…

Catherine: Would you like me to take a lie detector test?
[after the test]
Test examiner: No blips, no blood pressure variations, no pulse variance. Either she’s telling the truth or I’ve never met anyone like her.
Nick: She’s lying.

…

Beth [after rough sex with Nick]: You’ve never been like that before. Why?
Nick: You tell me, you’re the shrink.
Beth: You weren’t making love to me.
Nick: Well, who was I making love to?
Beth: You weren’t making love.

…

Catherine: Funny how the subconscious works.
Nick: Hilarious.

…

Lt. Walker: Alright, I’m gonna ask you once, Nick – for the record did you kill Marty Nilsen?
Nick: No. Come on – I’m going to storm into his office in front of everybody in the afternoon and then that night I’m going to kill him? I’d have to be really dumb to do that.
IA man: Going after him before gets you off the hook for killing him that’s your alibi.
Lt Walker: Like writing a book about killing a guy gets you off the hook for killing him.

…

Lt Walker: First you’ve got her buying your file. Now you’ve got her killing Nilsen. Forget her, willya? Go someplace. Sit in the sun. Get away from this goddamn fog. Get her out of your system.
Nick: You don’t get it, do you? She knew nobody would but it. She knew I’d say she did it. And she knew nobody would buy it.
Lt Walker: She’s screwing with your head, Nick. Stay away from her.

…

Catherine: You got any coke? I just love coke with Jack Daniels.
Nick: I’ve got a Pepsi in the fridge.

…

Catherine: I brought you something.
[she hands him a book]
Nick: What’s it about?
Catherine: A boy kills his parents. They have a plane. He makes it look like an accident.
Nick: Why does he do it?
Catherine: To see if he can get away with it.

…

Nick: How’s your new book?
Catherine: It’s practically writing itself.

…

Gus [after passing Catherine on the stairs]: Forgive me for askin’, Hoss, and I don’t mean to belabor the obvious, but why is it that you’ve got your head so far up your own ass?
Nick: She wants to play? Fine. I can play.
Gus: Everybody that she plays with dies.
Nick [grimly]: I know what that’s like.

…

Nick: Let me ask you something, Rocky – man to man. I think she’s the fuck of the century, what do you think?

…

Catherine: You shouldn’t play this game.
Nick: Why not? I like it.
Catherine: You’re in over your head.
Nick: Maybe. But this is how I’ll catch my killer.

…

Catherine: You won’t learn anything I don’t want you to know.
Nick: Yes, I will. Then I’ll nail you.
Catherine: Nah. You’ll just fall in love with me.
Nick: I’m in love with you already. But I’ll nail you anyway. You can put that in your book.

…

Dr. McElwaine: Nick, when you recollect your childhood, are your recollections pleasing to you?
Nick: Number 1, I don’t remember how often I used to jerk off, but it was a lot. Number 2, I wasn’t pissed off at my dad, even when I was old enough to know what he and mom were doing in the bedroom. Number 3, I don’t look in the toilet before I flush it. Number 4, I haven’t wet my bed for a long time. Number 5, why don’t the two of you go fuck yourselves; I’m outta here.

…

Beth: You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?
Nick: What is this interest you’ve got in her?
Beth: My interest is in you, not in her. She seduces people, she manipulates…
Nick: I thought you hardly know her.
Beth: I know the type. I’m a psychologist.
Nick: That means you manipulate people too, doesn’t it, Beth? You’re a practicing psychologist – that means you’re better at it than she is!!

…

Nick: I’m not sure anymore she did it.
Gus [exasperated]: Which one you talkin’ about now, Hoss? We know ole Hazel did it; we know young Roxy did it–and the other one? Well, hell, she’s got that magna cum lawdy pussy on her that done fried up your brain.

…

Catherine [to Nick]: Killing isn’t like smoking. You can quit.

…

Beth [to Nick]: She’s evil! She’s brilliant!!

…

Gus: You got goddamned Tweety Birds flutterin’ around your head, that’s what you got! You think you can fuck like minks, raise rugrats, and live happily ever after? Ah, Man!! [/b]

[iambiguous]

Multiple personality disorder. Or, technically, dissociative identity disorder. Or, less techincally, “split personality”. It is a device often used in film. I first got hooked on it myself after reading the book Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber. The book was later turned into a 5 part television “event” in 1976.

But: Is it real? More or less? Here is one take on it: psychcentral.com/lib/dispelling- … er/0009785

This is less Sybil however than Psycho. Though no where near as well done.

One thing however seems reasonably certain. This: that the extent to which it is a legitimate psychological condition/affliction is often linked to early childhood trauma. And that almost invariably revolves around sexual abuse and/or an extreme religious conviction embraced by one and/or both parents. Which may either be or not be linked to psychosis.

The idea being that in order to endure the abuse the mind creates other “personalities” – alter egos that act as one or another embodiment of a psychological defense mechanism.

Here though it all seems…fuzzier.

And then there’s that caboose. Caboose? Yep. Talk about contingency, chance and change! One day the caboose uncouples from the train, derails and ends up in your back yard. And then your deep, dark secrets begin to unravel for all the world to see. Worse, they begin to unravel inside your head as well.

This time though it becomes all the more problematic because he seems able to turn the personalites on and off at will. When he needs to be John [at work for example] he becomes John. Something about notes being passed back and forth between the personalities. No “blackouts” or “loss time”. Of course when a human mind derails it can become a bit more complicated than a train.

Peacock? That’s the name of the town. Population 800. So how long can it be before a secret of this magnitude begins to collapse all around him?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacock_(2010_film
trailer: youtu.be/AaF3YAauiwc

PEACOCK [2010]
Written in part and directed by Michael Lander

[b]Mother [in overlapping voices and moods like memories]: I’m doing this because I love you. John. You know what happens…I warned you. I warned you, John. This is what you’ll turn into. I warned you. Don’t talk to anyone. Why would you keep things from me! Look at me. Look at me, John. Look at me. John! Don’t look at me unless I tell you to. You ruined it. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t you keep things from me! I’m doing this because I love you. Don’t move a muscle unless I tell you.
[pause]
Mother: I don’t love you any more.

…

Louise: I don’t mean to be rude, but how do you know John? Are you family?
Emma: I live here.

…

Sheriff: I knocked on your door this morning to check on the young lady you got staying with you. Nobody answered. Some of the women tell me she’s your wife. Nobody knew you got married. Congratulations. John, I’m really happy for you.
John: I just need everything back to how it was before.[/b]

Not a chance, John.

[b]John: I don’t know what Emma told you. I don’t know what she told you, but she’s not the boss of me. I make the decisions, not Emma. I’m the man of the house!

…

John: Why are you asking me for money?
Maggie: The checks. I haven’t got a check in a year now. If I could just…
John: What checks? I wasn’t sending you any checks.
Maggie: Your… Your mother was.
John: My mother died a year ago.
Maggie: I didn’t know that.
John: What were the checks for?
Maggie: He’s two now. I… I honestly thought you knew. Your mama was sending me checks as long as I stayed away.

…

Maggie: I’m sorry, where’s John?
Emma: Oh, he’s sleeping.

…

Maggie: Emma, it’s bad. It’s really bad.
Emma: Please, I need to know. I won’t judge you. Please believe me when I say that.
Maggie: I met his mother three years ago in a bar, and she paid me. She said it was just to meet John. She brought me to that house and she brought me…She brought me up those stairs, and I thought you were her. She was wearing this old blue and white dress. And the creaking of that bed. John didn’t wanna do any of it. I swear, Emma. But I couldn’t stop her. And she just stayed in the room the whole time. And then I was forced to stay. I was so scared. She made him do…She made him do horrible things.[/b]

All that’s missing is the part about God.

[b]Maggie: I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I caused trouble for you and Emma.
John: She’s not my wife.

…

John: She held my head underwater.
Sheriff: Emma?
John: No. When I was a kid.
Sheriff: Your mother?

…

Maggie: Emma, is everything okay? Emma, what’s going on? What are you doing?
Emma: I don’t want what happened to John to ever happen again. I’ll give you all the money. All of it. Go to Madison and get out of Peacock.
Maggie: Did I do something wrong? I thought I was gonna take John’s job at the bank…
Emma: John shouldn’t be dead. He shouldn’t be dead. I should never have left the house. He’s not safe here.
Maggie: I don’t understand you. You’re scaring me.

…

Fanny: Emma, Emma, it’s Fanny! Emma? Where’s Maggie, Emma? Is she with you? It’s wonderful out here. You’re missing it. Emma?[/b]

[iambiguous]

Love and death. Go ahead, take a shot at reconciling them.

Of course, if you find the cure for death you won’t have to. But then how they sometimes go about that in a movie like this and the options afforded us mere mortals “in reality” are hardly what one would call “in sync”. This is more like a…fairy tale.

And, as such, it is bursting at the seams with all manner of grandiose conjecture about life and death, about living and dying, about love, about the way of the flesh and the way of the spirit.

The film was made in 2006. The Mayan civilization plays a big part in it. And soon the Mayan Prophesy revolving around the end of the world in 2012 would be popping up everywhere. Coincidence? I don’t know.

Still, once the end credits start rolling we are right back where we started: fitting these scripted observations into the considerably more exigent world that we actually live in. Each one of us more or less able to live, more or less able to love. And destined to die. But always only from a point of view.

Here is a discussion with the director about how he connects these dots: beliefnet.com/Entertainment/ … outh.aspx#

It’s all imagined in three narratives: the past, the present and the future. Love and death being an imporatant theme in whichever direction you go.

And somewhere in the midst all of this [either smack dab in the middle or far, far out on the horizon] is God.

Anyway, even if you don’t buy into all of the metaphysical speculation [mumbo jumbo?], you can still sit back and enjoy it as a visual feast. You might even want to watch it muting the sound altogether.

IMDb

[b]Instead of using CGI, Darren Aronofsky chose to do the special effects for the film by using micro-photography of chemical reactions on tiny petri dishes. He has said that CGI would take away from the timelessness of the film and that he wants the film to stand the test of time.

Warner Bros. refused to do a director’s commentary for the DVD release, so Darren Aronofsky recorded one in his living room and released it on his website.

In Genesis 3:24 it is stated that the Tree of Life is guarded by a cherub wielding a flaming sword. The Mayan high priest in the movie also guards the tree of life, wielding a flaming sword. [/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0414993/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountain
trailer: youtu.be/hA2IpUTZkls

THE FOUNTAIN [2006]
Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky

[b]Title card: Therefore, the Lord God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden and placed a flaming sword to protect the tree of life. - Genesis 3:24

…

Lord of Xibalba: Death is the road to awe!

…

Izzi [to Tommy]: How amazing that the Mayans chose a dying star to represent their underworld. Of all the healthy points of light in the sky…how did they find one that was dying?[/b]

Well, all stars [eventually] die.

[b]Grand Inquisitor: Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But, fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.

…

Grand Inquisitor: Your queen seeks immortality on Earth. A false paradise. This is heresy. She leads you toward vanity…away from the spirit. But this is foolishness. For death exists. The day of judgment is irrefutable. All life must be judged.[/b]

Exactly. This is the point I raise time and again in discussing God with the more, uh, ecumenical religionists.

[b]Isabel: These times are dark. But every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning

…

Tomas [after Avila tells him of a Mayan fountain of youth – sap from their tree of life]: Eternal life? As Spain’s fate hangs at the whims of a merciless enemy you dare taunt us with pagan yarns!
Isabel: There not yarns. Our own Bible confirms it. [/b]

Which is to say that after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, God hid the Tree of Life. And then [somehow] the Mayans in New Spain got hold of it. What could be more reasonable?

[b]Izzi: This is an actual Mayan book. It explains the Creation myth. You see that’s first father. He’s the very first human.
Tommy: Hmm. Is he dead?
Izzi: He sacrificed himself to make the world.
[pause]
Izzi: That’s the tree of life bursting out of his stomach. His body became the trees’ roots. They spread and formed the earth. His soul became the branches rising up forming the sky. All the remained is first father’s head. His children hung in in the heavens creating Xibalba.
Tommy: Xibalba. The star, eh?
[corrects himself]
Tommy: nebula
Izzi: So what do you think?
Tommy: About?
Izzi: That idea. Death as an act of creation.

…

Dr. Guzetti: Tommy, no one invents new drugs overnight, no one! You’re not being rational. You can’t fix everything!
Tommy: Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.
Dr. Guzetti: Your wife needs you! Why are you here?
Tommy: Why the fuck do you think I’m here?!

…

Izzi: Remember Moses Morales?
Tommy: Who?
Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about.
Tommy: From your trip.
Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn’t believe it.
Tommy: Izzi…
Izzi: No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father’s body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree’s fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said… death was his father’s road to awe. That’s what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I’ve been trying to write the last chapter and I haven’t been able to get that out of my head!
Tommy: Why are you telling me this?
Izzi: I’m not afraid anymore, Tommy. [/b]

That’s all there is to it. You are afraid of death only because you have not come up with a way to believe that you should not be afraid. And, sure, if it works, why not?

[b]Dr. Guzetti: …we struggle all our lives to become whole. Complete enough when we die to achieve a measure of grace. Few of us ever do. Most of us end up going out the way we came in, kicking and screaming.

…

Tommy [to Dr. Guzetti]: Death is a disease. It’s like any other. And there’s a cure. A cure. And I will find it. [/b]

Or maybe not. Maybe instead [like Izzi] he will come to believe the only thing you have to fear here is fear itself. Right.

[iambiguous]

The critics sure hated this one. Well, 67% of them did.

Me? Hmm. Let’s just say I didn’t love it. But I really did like it. I still do.

Now, let’s move on.

The theme here has been explored over and over and over again in film: getting out of the working class and actually being somebody. It might be sports [think Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves] or it might be one or another of “the Arts”.

It’s dancing here. Only Alex is particularly bold and wants to take traditional ballet into a whole other dimenision. She wants to flashdance. But first she has to put down her welding torch and audition. And yet, as with so many enscounced in the working class, she has not exactly been mentored from birth to aspire to something this “cultured”. Instead, she has acquired her skills “on her own”. But she lacks the confidence needed to put those skills up against young men and women who come from more “privileged” backgrounds…and who were “groomed” for this sort of thing right from the start.

Fortunately, in being young and beautiful, her boss [who is considerably cultured] has taken a shine to her. Can he help her to achieve her dream? Maybe by, say, pulling a few strings?

And then there is the plight of Jeanie and Ritchie. They too want to pull up stakes…to be fabulous success stories. Jeanie as a skater, Richie as a comedian. Only they don’t quite have the skills [or the benefactors] to pull it off. So they no doubt will get “stuck” for the rest of their lives being like most of the rest of us: living from paycheck to paycheck with just “a job”.

This film was in part based on a true story. This one: buzzfeed.com/sorayaroberts/t … eft-behind

IMDb

[b]Marine Jahan was Jennifer Beals’ body double for the dancing scenes. Jahan was kept hidden from the press because the filmmakers did not want to ruin the illusion. Alex’s leap through the air in the audition scene was done by gymnast Sharon Shapiro and the break-dancing was done by Crazy Legs. Jahan appeared in the music video for “Maniac”.

Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS was offered the lead male role as Nick Hurley but turned it down in fear of hurting his “demon” image.

The role of Alex Owens was originally offered to Melanie Griffith, who turned it down. Executives at Paramount Pictures wanted an unknown for the part. A nationwide search for a young actress was narrowed down to three finalists: Leslie Wing, Demi Moore, and Jennifer Beals. Reportedly, a Paramount executive took pictures of the three actresses to a group of construction workers on the studio lot, asking them “Which of these women do you most want to fuck?” and being given the answer “Jennifer Beals”.

The soundtrack to the movie sold 700,000 copies in its first two weeks of release.[/b]

Here’s the soudtrack: youtu.be/bb6jIVg4Yjo
Pure pop. But some pop is better than other pop.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashdance
trailer: youtu.be/nqBQWbjqCRo

FLASHDANCE [1983]
Directed by Adrian Lyne

[b]Pete: Number 174 63 1503.
Nick: Pete, I don’t want her zip code.
Pete: It’s her Social Security number, asshole. She works for you.

…

Ballet school receptionist [to applicants]: When you fill out this application, list all your years of dance education. Starting with the most recent place you’ve studied, and the number of years at each institution. Also, if you have any professional or other repertory experience, please list those. [/b]

Alex looks at all the others [posh and prim] and then walks out.

[b]Alex: Remember the first time you took me to see them dance? I have dreams about it.
Hanna: Dreaming is wonderful, but it won’t get you closer to what you want.

…

Alex [to Johnny C.]: Did you know that the smallest penis ever measured was 1.1 inches?[/b]

Richie takes the stage:

[b]Richie: Hi. How you doing? l’m Richie Blazik. Did you hear about the Polack bank robber? He tied up the safe and blew the guard. So, the lady says to the waiter, ‘‘Excuse me, sir, do you have frogs legs?’’ And the waiter says, ‘‘No, that’s just the way I walk.’’ You want to talk about boogers? I know a lot about them. How about boogers? Sports for fifty? What’s a pimple on a Polack’s ass? A brain tumour.
From the audience: Take a walk.
From the audience: Bring on the bimbos.
Richie: Come on, guys. Could you give me a break? Look, l’m just a cook. l’m just a cook, all right? This is my big chance, so if you screw it up for me, l’m going to put cockroaches in your hamburgers, you got it?
[laughter from the audience]
Richie: Miracles do happen, I guess. It took the Steelers 40 years to win a championship, didn’t it? Did you hear about the Polack, who locked his keys in the car, and he used a coat hanger to get his family out? Did you hear about the Polack who died drinking milk? The cow fell on him. A Polish terrorist tried to blow up a car and he burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
[the audience laughs]
Richie: You guys have been real nice. l’ve gotta go and cook the hamburgers. No roaches, I promise.

…

Nick: I’ll bring him a doggy bag if you’ll have dinner with me.
Alex: I told you, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go out with the boss.
Nick: OK. Have it your way. You’re fired.

…

Jeanie: All that time and practice. What a waste. Goddamn waste of time.
Alex: Come on, It was not. It wasn’t. You went out there, didn’t you? At least you had the guts to try.
Dad: How are you doing, sport?
Jeanie: I’m sorry, Daddy.
Dad: I love you more now than l’ve ever loved anything in my whole life. What the hell. You bounced pretty good.

…

Alex: She practised for two years.
Nick: She’ll do better next time.
Alex: There won’t be any next time.

…

Alex: I’ve never studied before. I mean, I read books and stuff and I watch. But I’ve never taken dance classes. There’s all those dancers in one room watching each other and watching you.
Nick: But you dance in front of an audience at the club every night.
Alex: No, but it’s different. I never see them. You go out there, the music starts and you begin to feel it. And your body just starts to move. I know it sounds really silly. But something inside of you just clicks. You just take off and you’re gone. It’s like you’re somebody else for a second.
[she starts to weep]
Alex: Some nights I…Some nights I just can’t wait to get out there…Just so I can disappear.

…

Alex: Where are you going?
Richie: L.A. I Got my car all packed. I’m just going to get on the turnpike. That’s it. I’m gone.
Alex: What about Jeanie?
Richie: Look, I love Jeanie. But I just don’t have it to give to her right now. She’s going to be all right. She’ll be fine.
Alex: Come on, don’t go yet. I’ll make some coffee, we can sit and talk.
Richie: I can’t. I mean…What am I going to do here? Cook hamburgers and pretend I’m a comedian?

…

Nick: I’m just buying you lunch.
Alex: I don’t want you buying me anything. I don’t want you buying me, period!

…

Katie [Nick’s ex-wife]: You’re not really a welder, are you?
Alex: Yes, I really am.
Katie: And you really take your clothes off at night?
Alex: I don’t really take them off.
Katie: I was under the impression that you did. Has he taken you to the steel mill yet?
Nick: That’s enough, Katie.
Katie: He likes to go there on his first date. That was your first date, wasn’t it?
Alex: Yeah, it was. As a matter of fact…I fucked his brains out.

…

Alex: I loved the dinner. And I loved the way they sat us right away, an I loved that there were people waiting and we just whizzed in.
Nick: I called the restaurant last night and told them it was a very special occasion.
[Alex thinks about that]
Alex: What do you mean you called them last night? Stop the car.
Nick: Why?
Alex: STOP THE GODDAMN CAR!!

…

Alex: You call that dancing, rolling on the floor on your back?
Jeanie: Yes! So what, I make good money!
Alex: Look at you! I thought you wanted to be a dancer? You call that dancing?
Jeanie: Yes!
Alex taking money out of Jeanie’s panties and throwing it on the wet ground in the rain]: What’s this shit? huh?
Jeanie: It’s Mine!
[sobs]
Jeanie: Why’d you come, here?
Alex: Because, you’re my friend. Jerk.

…

Mawby’s dancer [to Alex]: You know, when I started out, I was 17. I used to work in these old movie theatres. Every cent I had, I spent on costumes. I had more fancy costumes and dresses than you do. When I went on that stage I was looking so good. One day I just stopped buying them. I don’t even know what happened. I thought about it a lot. I just can’t seem to pin it down. The dresses got old and I just stopped wearing them. [/b]

As for her audition. Right.

[iambiguous]

It’s called the Erasmus Programme: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme

And, through this, Xavier comes to share an apartment with students from all over Europe—England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Denmark. So, naturally, conflicts will be inevitable. Conflicts that revolve around gender and relationships and sex and value judgments. Among others.

And that is because their individual experiences, while all rooted in a common European heritage, will come into conflict given manner in which folks from different countries come to think about what is good and bad, right and wrong, true and false.

And then [inevitably] there are all of the problematic quandaries revolving around language itself. Most of us would agree that what the world needs is a common language. As long as it is English of course.

So, they are confronted with this: is there a way for them to establish what is the right thing to do…or are they better off agreeing that there is not and seek instead to [pragmatically] focus the beam existentially on moderation, negotiation and compromprise.

To the extent, of course, that they are able to construe the conflicts in these terms at all. Fortunately, they always manage to work things out.

IMDb

In the English subtitles, several sections are purposefully translated incorrectly to preserve the humorous nature of the film. The list of strange names around Paris is changed to “Honolulu, Punxsutawney, Piccadilly, Massachusetts, Saskatoon and Machu Picchu;” and during the scene in which Wendy mispronounces “Xavier n’est pas ici…” the English subtitles say “Xavier eez not here…”

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L’Auberge_Espagnole
trailer: youtu.be/zjyoLhDIoXM

The Spanish Apartment [L’Auberge Espagnole] 2002
Written and directed by Cédric Klapisch

[b]Xavier [voiceover]: My mother is a hippy. A real one. And the problem with real hippies is that they always tell the truth.
Mother: You don’t like bulgar, you don’t like tofu. I cannot cook anymore for you. If you prefer to go in the fast-food and eat their shit… to wolf down GMO, pesticides, toxins, poisons – well, be my guest, I won’t stop you.

…

Xavier [voiceover after looking up Erasmus online]: You wonder who Erasmus is. I looked on the Internet because I didn’t know either. And, honestly, I still don’t.[/b]

Apparently the Erasmus programme is “a fucking mess”:

[b]Erasmus receptionist: You need agreement of your research director here. You need agreement and signature of your research director there. You need the agreement of the university there. You need the agreement of this university. Your student health insurance card, you have to give it to me. Are you SMEREP or MNEF?
Xavier: MNEF
Receptionist: Ok then you have to go at the MNEF office, building D ground floor to obtain the form E. If you don’t have this document, you won’t be able to get your medical fee and medecine costs back when you’ll be there. OK, fill all these out. And after of course, like other files, a resume, a covering letter, name of your post-graduate diploma and that’s it.
Xavier [voiceover]: I don’t know why the world has become such a mess. I don’t know if it’s compulsory that the world become like that. Everything is complicated, badly-made, untidy. Before there were fields with cows and chickens. It was much simpler. Everything was more simple I think. Before we had a direct contact with things. In the world of Martine, we had animals. We ate what we grew. We made our clothes, we built our house. In the farm, the life was simple for Martine. Sometimes I wonder why we have left the world of Martine.

…

Xavier [voiceover after arriving in Barcelona]: When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everything is unknown, virgin…After you’ve lived here, walked these streets, you’ll know them inside out. You’ll know these people. Once you’ve lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times… it’ll belong to you because you’ve lived there. That was about to happen to me, but I didn’t know it yet.

…

Xavier [voiceover]: Later, much later, back in Paris, each harrowing ordeal will become an adventure. For some idiotic reason, your most horrific experiences are the stories you most love to tell.

…

Professor: OK. Good morning everyone. I’m going to talk about the future of the world capitalism.
Student: Please sir. Could you make the course in catilian?
Professor: Sorry, it’s impossible. The majority of students are catalan. They don’t have to change their language.
Student: We are Erasmus students who don’t speak catalan, yet we all speak spanish.
Professor: I understand your position perfectly miss but understand me too. We are in Catalonia and the catalan is the official language. For spanish, go to Madrid or in South America.

…

French student: I find it contradictory to defend catalan while we are building Europe.
Gambian student: I don’t agree. First because we’re talking about identities. There’s not just one valid identity, but several compatible identities. It’s a matter of respect. Me, for example, I have at least 2 identities. The gambian identity, that I carry inside of me and the catalan identity. It’s not contradictory to combine both.

…

Wendy [on the phone]: Xavier’s gone to school. Okay?
Xavier’s Mother: Ah, oui! Il est à la fac.
Wendy: What?
Xavier’s Mother: La fac!
Wendy: La “fuck”?
Xavier’s Mother: Yes. After fac he can telephone maman.

…

Wendy: I’m going to fuck.[/b]

She means the university.

[b]Juan: Been in Barcelona long?
Xavier: Two month.
Juan [correcting Xavier]: Two months.
Xavier: Yeah, fuck. Two months.
Juan: Exactly. You spend too much time in school. Come here more often. This is where you’ll learn about Barcelona!
[…]
Juan: Come back. I’ll teach you ‘puta madre’ Spanish in two months.
Xavier: Puta madre?
Xavier [voice over] I was fluent in ‘puta madre’ Spanish in no time. I immediately became a regular.

…

Anne-Sophie: It’s a pity that Barcelona is such a dirty city.
Xacier: No more than Paris I think.
Anne-Sophie: Yes of course it is. There are a lot of places here that look like the Third World.
Xavier: I know a lot of places in Paris that look like the Third World too…To say Barcelona is a dirty city is racist.

…

Xavier: I’ve always wondered. Do you ever use stuff like dildos with girls?
Isabelle: It’s funny. Guys never understand women. It’s stupid. Each sex off in its own dark corner. I think each sex is on ots own side, without any interest in the other. While if a guy took an interest in women he’s be a pig in shit.
Xavier: What do you mean?
Isabelle: You just don’t get it. Their psychological makeup, their bodies, what gives them pleasure.
Xavier: Why do you say that?
Isabelle: You think it’s all in the cock! Caresses are really important.
Xavier: I know.
Isabelle: Yeah, but you don’t do it very well.

…

Wendy: Xavier, I can’t. I’ve…I’ve really got to write, okay?
Xavier: But, Wendy, you will write tomorrow. Come on!
Wendy: No. This is my diary. You know, I need to be disciplined.
Xavier: Wendy, you’re too serious, you know!
Wendy: What do you mean, I’m too serious?
Xavier: You are not a nun! Come on! Come with us tonight, please!
Wendy: Listen, I know I’m not a nun! I just don’t want to go out with… e-e-everyone! I don’t like clubs and I don’t like dancing. Maybe I’m not your idea of a typical trendy London girl, but techno music bulls me, all right? And if I’m a nun because I don’t get out of this house enough for you guys, then that’s too bad!

…

Xavier [voiceover]: I only understood later that life can be like a bad sitcom.

…

Xavier [voiceover]: I don’t know why my life has always been such a mess. It has always been complicated, untidy, in a jumble, completely chaotic I feel that life is easier for the others, more coherent, more logical. [/b]

Well, yes and no.

[b]Xavier: I think I’m not well. I don’t sleep anymore, I’m depressed. I don’t know if it’s normal.
Doctor [Anne-Sophie’s husband]: Maybe it’s not that serious. Maybe your limbic system is bothering you.
Xavier: What is that ?
Doctor: The primitive part of the brain. Where the most animal emotions take place. Contrary to the cortex who manage more elaborated reactions.
Xavier: Does it give visions?
Doctor: You have visions? What kind?
Xavier: I see Erasmus.

…

Isabelle: It’s a shame you’re not a girl.
Xavier: The world’s badly made.

…

Xavier [voiceover]: I knew it was our last kiss. I thought about the first one. I remember it was on la rue d’Orchampt. I don’t know why we had chosen the street of Paris with the smallest pavement. I thought that a lot hapened between these kisses. All these streets I’ve been with her. All this complicated path. To arrive here, today. Without her. I found myself in the streets of Paris where no Parisians go. I was a foreigner among foreigners. Why I was here, I didn’t know. Generally, I’ve never known why I was here. I must be typical.[/b]

But then in the end he just ends up as one more spoke on the coorporate wheel. Just like his dad. Or…maybe not?

Xavier [voiceover]: I’m French, Spanish, English, Danish. I’m not one, but many. I’m like Europe, I’m all that – a real mess.

[iambiguous]

Money, money, money.

Getting it. Keeping it. And then getting and keeping still more of it. It only stops when you do.

We all have our own unique reaction to money. But when you live in a small town that is suddenly seduced by the prospect of “commercial development” all of those conflicting reactions can come percolating up to the surface. In short, some want it, some don’t. And that’s because some benefit and some don’t.

And for all of the usual reasons. Mostly, they revolve around the prospect of change. And that, too, some want and some don’t. There are folks who will rush pell-mell toward the future [any future] while others will always cling stubbornly to the past. But not just any past. It almost always has to be their own rendition of it.

But let’s face it: There are folks out there who put money smack dab in the center of the universe. And god help those who get in between them and their getting it.

And since this is a John Sayles film, there will be other political elements as well: gender, race, class. But mostly it’s a peek inside the lives of folks living out the day to day complications of intertacting with others who are only more or less like them.

One big theme is the shifting [historical] relationship between the individual and whatever particular political and economic context he or she resides in. How much should folks rely on their own “grit and imagination” and how much of that should they [or will they, or can they] pass on to “society”, or to the “times”. Sayles is more than willing to give the microphone to folks on both sides of the divide. But it’s clear he is out to basically expose the nature of crony capitalism. You have the local government [the county commission], the chamber of commerce and the “people”. And either through eminent domain or property taxes, the developers will usually get their way.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_State_(film
trailer: youtu.be/D-UEPF0sdBY

SUNSHINE STATE [2002]
Written and directed by John Sayles

[b]Murray: I’m talking about certified public accountants from Toledo with a fixed pension and a little nestegg who don’t want to spend their golden years trekking through slush. Dreams are what you sell. A concept. You sell sunshine. You sell orange groves. You sell gently breezes wafting through the palm trees.

…

Murray: …out of the muck and the mangroves we created this…
Friend [looking around him]: Golf courses?
Murray: Nature…on a leash.

…

Marly [looking out at the developers]: Buzzards.

…

Marly [to Jack]: What if I told you my Daddy wouldn’t sell to Planation Estates if they had his nuts in a trash compactor?

…

Dr. Lloyd: I’m trying to round up some folks for this county commission meeting tonight. What I’m worried about is them sneaking though this public domain business without us making a showing.
Mrs. Pierce: I thought that was all settled when they took the cemetery.
Dr. Lloyd: I’m afraid it won’t stop there.

…

Dr. Lloyd: You’ve already conspired to take away a third of our original tract.
County Commisioner: Now you know that was a private transaction between Exley Plantation, Estates Planned Community and those individual property owners. This Commision didn’t know anything about it until the plantation submitted its development plan.
Dr. Lloyd: If you folks had not already approved it under the table they wouldn’t have gone ahead…You let them take our cemetery.

…

Earl: The concept of eminent domain…
Dr. Lloyd: …is a weapon you people use to undermine our well-being!

…

Marly: Yip…

…

Dr. Lloyd [to Reggie]: We’re trying to save an endangered species. Us.

…

Reggie: So what happend?
Dr. Lloyd: Civil rights happened. Progress. Used to be you were black, you’d buy black. In Jim Crow days, you needed your shoes shined or you wanted a ride in a taxi to the train station or wanted some ribs, a fish sandwich, chances are a black man owned the place you got it in. Now the drive-thrus serve anybody. But who owns them? Not us. All our people do is wear paper hats and dip them fries out. The only thing we got left are funeral parlors and barbershops.
Reggie [who is a doctor]: But now we can do anything.
Dr. Lloyd: Yeah. Them that can get over do fine.
[pause]
Dr. Lloyd: Them that can’t are in a world of trouble.

…

Furman: In my day, life was simpler. You knew where you stood. A man was left to make his own way in the world. You didn’t have none of these pressure groups, these advocate groups…these special interest groups handicapping the race. It went to the smartest and the strongest and the swiftest. Then, if a man could carve out something for himself he knowed he’d earned it. No whooping crane or spotted owl. The colored man, the white man, the Spanish…they all started out from scratch. If you couldn’t survive the course, it was just tough titty. Nowadays what they got…it ain’t natural. They got us so zoned and regulated and politically corrected and environmentally sensitized to the point where it is only your multi-internationals with a dozen lawyers sitting around like buzzards waiting for something to litigate that can afford to put one brick on top of another! Little guy, no matter how much grit or imagination he brings to it, ain’t got a chance. They got him tied down so he can’t hardly breathe. You smoke a cigarette they make you feel like a damn baby strangler. Where’s it all going to end?

…

Delia [to Desiree]: I must say, my youthful aspirations had nothing to do with becoming the Sarah Bernhardt of Delrona Beach. We adjust.

…

Marly: What are you drinking?
Jack: Draft. How about you?
Marly: Shots. Tequila. I figure, you’re gonna drink, why fuck around?

…

Marly [to Jack]: The important thing is to keep that smile on your face, even if you’re drowning.

…

Eunice: We can fall so quickly.
Dr. Lloyd: It’s just a stumble not a fall.
Eunice [wistfully]: If you could just go and get it and hand it to them.
Dr. Lloyd: Nobody handed us anything.
Eunice: Of course they did. People fought their whole lives just to keep their heads above water. We got to start on dry land.

…

Steve [dressed as a Civil War re-enactor]: You can’t live in the past.

…

Marly: So you decide what trees live and what trees die?
Jack: That’s part of it.
Marly: That’s kind of like being God.
Jack: You remember the last hurricane?
Marly: It was Elmo.
Jack: That’s God. I’m just a hired hand.

…

Marly [to Jack on why she didn’t become an oceanographer]: Shit happens, you know. A lot of it happened to me.

…

Flash: It’s about your mother’s property. You don’t want to wait too long before making plans. What I worry about is that she’ll try to hold on to the house there until it’s just too late.
Desiree: Too late for what?
Flash: All these new resorts and time-sharing outfits over in Delrona have sent their property taxes through the roof. So what we’re offering is a chance for the people here to sell before they get taxed out of their homes.

…

Desiree: How you doing with Terrell?
Reggie: Kid’s pretty good with a claw hammer and a handsaw. If this was 1925 he’d have a future.

…

Flash: These people own a lot of things – businesses, real estate…
Desiree: They own Exley Plantation?
Flash: Technically, yeah.
Desiree: What you get for tricking people?
Flash: I’m not tricking anybody. I mean, if they don’t want to sell, they don’t have to. They do want to sell, they get a decent price. Hell, who do you work for?
Desiree: That’s different.
Flash: Life moves on. Shit gets bought and sold. There’s a handful of people who run the whole deal…and then there’s the rest of us who do what they say…and get paid for it.

…

Furman [near tears to Terrell]: Miss Delia…she’s off selling away my whole life.

…

Delia: In view of the fact that we have no crystal ball to inform us on the scope of your investment group’s future activities, I think some sort of continuing participation would be in order.
Mr Forrester: Continuing?
Delia: An escalator claus?
Mr Forrester: I’m not really sure if I…
Delia: Let’s say five years from now, you’ve transformed our little beachfront into one of those cash-generating monstrosities that grace the coastal areas further to the south. We would receive a percentage of the gross proceeds from all rentals…or the adjusted gross if you will, depending on our ability to audit.

…

Jack [after the discovery of Native American bones on the site where the development was to begin]: I’ve been shut down by fish, I’ve been shut down by birds.
Marly: Never by people?
Jack: Not by dead ones.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Best friends forever?

Well, maybe. But then “forever” can be problematic to say the least. Especially in this day and age. Why? Because people are surrounded by the temptation to change. In the modern world, there are endless ways in which one might stumble upon new experiences. Or form new friendships with folks that take you down paths you had never even imagined. Meanwhile, you are constantly being bombarded with all that is new: books, films, music, art, memes, trends, fashions. Which opens up the possibility of thinking about things in a very different manner. And the internet of course has expanded our options expotentially.

It’s basically a “lifestyle” age that we live in now. Our behaviors tend to become increasingly more “specialized” as we find ourselves connecting with communities of folks who share our own particular interests. Until, of course, something [someone] newer still comes along and we let that all go and become immersed in yet another “lifestyle” instead.

Either that or, in the opposite direction, people get sucked into our ubiquitious pop culture. Or they become obssessed with the sort of mindless consumption that tends to reduce everything down to money and the possession of “things”. And, once there, what does it even matter that you have a best friend forever?

It’s just that here the best friends – Marina and Holly – are considerably more iconoclastic. Though one [Holly] being considerably more than the other

Either way though, they all get sucked into one or another Youth Culture. And then, as they grow older, “the system”.

This film begins in 1973. It follows the lives of two women who become fully immersed in the modern world. And over the course of 30 odd years. In other words, in much the same manner as many of us were. Which is to say that contingency, chance and change are the very foundation of identity here. That and the way in which, fortuitously, we have no choice regarding the family and the community and the “times” into which we are born.

Holly is the introspective “serious” one. Marina is more extroverted – the “partying” type. I have myself always been attracted to the Hollys.

As for the men, well, they’re pigs mostly.

Bottom line: more love and human remains.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_Without_You_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Jk14XBjbiLg

ME WITHOUT YOU [2001]
Written in part and directed by Sandra Goldbacher

[b]Young Marina [to blindfolded Holly]: Take a step forward. And another one. And another. Right leg up. Higher. What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?

…

Mother [to Holly]: Some people are pretty people and some people are clever people…which is more important than looks.

…

Marina: You should dye your hair Holly, you look like a virgin.
Holly: I am a virgin.
Marina: But you don’t need to broadcast it.

…

Holly: It’s heroin.
Marina: I know what it is, for God’s sake.

…

Nat [to Holly]: Don’t worry. She’ll be puking for hours.

…

Holly: What happened?
Marina: What do you think fucking happened?
Holly: Not Craig. God, are you all right?
Marina: Holly, piss off. All right? Just piss off. Did you have a nice time fucking my brother? You know, you really shouldn’t bother. He’s totally obsessed with Carolyn. Didn’t you see his face when she left? He probably thought that you were her. You know what it’s like when you’re stoned. You want to have sex. It doesn’t matter who it’s with. Well, at least I tried heroin.

…

Mother: Did you have a nice time at Marina’s? What did you do?
Holly: Nothing much, just hard drugs and casual sex.
Mother: Yes, of course.

…

Max [Holly’s father]: If God had intended us to do gardening, why would he have invented Gentiles?

…

Nat: Could you give this to Holly?
Marina: What is it?
Nat: Nothing. Christmas card.
[Nat leaves and Marina opens the envelop and reads the letter]
Nat: “Dear Holly: I wanted to say that what happened last night was beautiful…though, a case of bad timing. And who knows what might happen in the future. Love from your confused and wretched friend, Nat.”
[She tears it up]

…

Marina: Nat’s gone to Greece with Carolyn.
Holly: Did he say anything?
Marina: About what? They’re all pigs, Holly. You’ve got me. You’ll always have me.

…

Daniel [college professor]: Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine…nothing that a good course of antidepressants couldn’t cure…or maybe years in psychoanalysis. “Why should we be subjected to their mother-fixated outpourings?” you ask. “We get enough of that from our boyfriends.” Right? Remember now, it’s just as relevant to talk about Lou Reed or Adam Ant in your essay. Precisely what Barthes said in the 50’s and what Baudrillard is saying now. Any questions?
Holly: Do you think that a deconstructive approach to literary criticism…that it leads to a cooler, less emotional response in the reader?
Daniel: Good. That’s an interesting one, isn’t it? That is the question. The thing about critical theory that is important to remember is the role the unconscious plays in it.

…

Holly: Do you know Nostalgia? That’s my favorite Tarkovsky.
Marina: Yes, it would be. She likes brooding. It’s on her CV. Hobbies: suffering and brooding. lsn’t it, Holl?
Daniel: I love brooding.

…

Marina [to Holly]: The thing about blokes is don’t ever be yourself, you’ve got to have a gimmick. How about ‘intense and difficult’? You could manage that.

…

Marina: Do you think I’m shallow?
Friend: Of course not.
Marina: Just because I don’t read books.
Friend: It doesn’t mean you’re not soulful.
Marina: What, you mean soulful like Holly?
Friend: Who mentioned Holly?
Marina: Committed to causes? You know, she’s a really scared person. And she thinks too much. I mean you can’t experience things by reading about them in novels.

…

Holly: I used to be, God, so in love with her brother, Nat. Talk about romantic projections. Christ. I would just melt when he came into the room. I probably still am in a way. In that yearning, impossible, Proustian…
Daniel: Jesus, Holly. Do you ever stop talking?
Holly: Daniel. Let’s do it here, right now. You could just pull up my skirt and throw me down in these leaves.
Daniel: Holly.
Holly: What? What’s the matter?
Daniel: Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Will you stop asking me what the matter is? I just don’t feel like fucking in a crummy, wet woods. That’s all.

…

Marina: There’s a Bergman on at the Duke of York’s tonight.
Daniel: You don’t really like that shit, do you?
Marina: Sometimes I do, actually.
Daniel: All right. Which one do you like best?
Marina: Wild Strawberries.
Daniel: That’s the one that’s on tonight. Which other one do you like, Miss Bergman fan?
Marina: Lots of them. That one about death. The black and white one.
[Daniel snickers and snorts]
Marina: Oh, fuck off. [/b]

Then Nat returns.

[b]Nat: Crime and Punishment. Perfect. “Raskolnikov pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms scarcely…scarcely conscious of himself and almost without effort…almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this but as soon as he had once brought the axe down his strength returned to him.”
Holly: Hello.
Nat: Hello.
Holly: You’ve still got your hat on.

…

Nat: Holly…are you seeing someone?
Holly: No, I was. Should I not be now?
Nat: It’s up to you.
Holly: Do you want me not to be?
Nat: Do you want me to want you not to be?
Holly: I think so. You know I do.

…

Nat: What happened? What did he say?
Holly: He–He was with her.
Nat: Who?
Holly: Marina. They were–He was with her!
Nat: The fucking bastard!
Holly: I just-- I can’t-- I can’t believe it. I don’t understand why she would do this to me.
Nat: Listen. Forget about him. He’s obviously a wanker.
Holly [crying]: He’s not a wanker. I just…I just can’t believe it. She must hate me. She must just hate me. She didn’t even want him until I did. I just can’t believe it. [/b]

No, he’s a wanker.

[b]Holly: She always does this to me. Oh, God, what if she knows about me?
Nat: Oh, who cares?
Holly [nearly hysterical]: Does she? What? Did she tell you? Oh, God, she told you. She…I can’t…I can’t bear this. I can’t bear this. I can’t bear this!
Nat [holding her]: What about last night, Holl?
Holly: No! Just forget it, please. Just forget it.
[Holly walks…then runs…away]
Nat: For fuck’s sake!

…

Daniel: Look, you…you can’t feel any worse about this than I do. I never knew you were such close friends. With her it was never anything more than just the…God, you are such an incredible girl. Woman. Someday you’re gonna meet some guy your own age who’s gonna be able to…
Holly: If you see or phone her again, I’m going to the vice chancellor to report you. How incredible is that?[/b]

Wanker? The guy is a true slimeball.

[b]Marina: I knew you liked him at first but didn’t think you’d do anything.
Holly: Because I’m so mousy and boring.
Marina: No. Well, yeah, if you say so. Yeah.
Holly: Because I’m not a vacuous airhead who shags the entire campus.
Marina: Oh, is daddy’s girl unhappy?
Holly: I’m going to bed. Could you get out now?
Marina: You’d better change the sheets. You don’t know where I’ve been.

…

Holly: This career chitchat makes me feel a total failure.
Nat: Tell me about it. I remember when it used to be hip to be on the dole.
Holly: I know.
Nat: What’s happened?
Holly: I’m still waiting to transmute into a successful adult instead of being a 12 year-old.
Nat: I remember that 12 year-old.

…

Nat [to Holly]: Who’s this boxing prick? He seems like one of Marina’s blokes.

…

Holly: He’s not a hopeless twat actually. And he’s not as superficial as he seems. He just…He likes the surfaces of things, and…and style can be stimulating, you know. And he does a lot of work on himself. And he’s funny, and my work is going well.
And I’m really happy for once.
Nat: Good. Good. Great.
Holly: So how’s lsabel?

…

Holly: Honestly, I mean, just the whole Jewish thing is…
Mirana: And why shouldn’t I be Jewish, huh? It gives me a sense of identity.
Holly: Really? Whose identity?

…

Marina: How can I be a mother when I’m such a terrible, sick person?
Holly: That’s one of the qualifications, isn’t it?

…

Marina: I can’t bear him to touch me. I feel so empty.
Holly: Come on. Look at you. You’ve got everything going for you. A career, lovely, real, Leo, marriage, a new religion, a baby. Come on.
Marina: No, I’m a big, fat nothing. I don’t have integrity or soul or beliefs. I haven’t even read War and fucking Peace!

…

Marina [sobbing]: You’re gonna go away to New York…and I’m going to be left here with a kid and him. And then there’s no point to anything. I might as…I might as well just die now.
Holly: Stop it. Stop it.
Marina: No, please, please, please don’t go. Please, please don’t go.

…

Holly: Stop it! Stop it! We both have just got to stop this.
Marina: Stop what? What do you mean?
Holly: Fuck, I don’t know. I just…I don’t want to be us anymore. Do you? I mean it’s not your fault. I…I let you do it, and I blame you. But I don’t like what I am with you. You’re strangling me. I mean, I mean, we’re like suffocating each other. All the time that I’m with you, I feel ugly and 14 and bloody desperate and depressed and not good enough and unsuccessful and jealous and stuck.
Marina: I can change, Holly. I’ll change.
Holly: No!
Marina: I will. I promise.
Holly: No! No! Get off of me!
Marina: Please! I’ll kill myself if you go.
Holly: No, you won’t!
Marina: I’ll kill myself! There’s no me without you.
Holly: Yes, there is.
Marina: No!
Holly: We’re getting a divorce. I’m sorry. I am sorry.[/b]

[iambiguous]

On the one hand, she is a cunning and manipultive con artist. On the other hand, she may or may not be a sociopath. Or, perhaps, a psychotic sociopath?

But she is married to an abusive mobster and she needs to extricate herself from it. So she concocts an elaborate sting involving her sister and a shrink.

Now, one would think that a psychiatrist, being someone sophisticated in deconstructing the human mind, would begin to see through the labyrinth she is constructing. But she has really thought this through. And she is counting on the fact that, as a dead ringer for Kim Bassinger, she will lure him into her trap.

Only she hasn’t accounted for just how vulnerable the sister is. There are, after all, lots of different ways we can get tugged and pulled into the orbits of others. And a devious mind may or may not be a match for love and lust. Especially when the sister is a dear ringer for Uma Thruman and the shrink a dead ringer for Richard Gere.

It slso explores the role of psychiatry in the criminal justice system. You see, the shrink here is also a forensic psychiatrist.

And then we learn a lot about “pathological intoxication”: definitions.uslegal.com/p/pathol … oxication/

It’s one of those mental afflictions that either is or is not real, depending on which “expert” you talk to. But then really clever people [like Heather] can use it to excuse all manner of behaviors. For example, killing her husband.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Analysis
trailer: youtu.be/xWiUQhvxjG4

FINAL ANALYSIS [1992]
Directed by Phil Joanou

[b]Diana [to Isaac a psychiatrist]: I had the dream again. I’m arranging flowers, on a table, for a center piece. I decorate the flower pot with fancy paper. Feels like velvet. There are three different kinds of flowers. There are lilies, and there are…by the way, did you reach my sister?

…

Diana: You really should talk to her.
Isaac: To who?
Diana: My sister. She says she knows some things about my mother and father. Might shed some light.
Isaac: Maybe those are the things we’d do best to uncover in our work here.
Diana: You should really talk to her. You won’t regret it.

…

Mike [defense attorney]: The prosecutor has taken the position…I wanna get this right… “Carrero is a dangerous schizophrenic, who should be locked away in a maximum-security state hospital.” End quote.
Prosecutor: My conclusion was based on the fact that Carrero is a professional pickpocket. He’s been in and out of the system…
Mike: The question isn’t whether he’s a model citizen. He’s already been found guilty. We’re here today to try to figure out what to do with him.[/b]

Yep, the shrink gets him off:

Isaac: First of all, I found clearly that Pepe Carrero is not a schizophrenic. His stepfather was beating him. And he’d been doing so routinely over a nine-year period. Pepe had an acute psychological breakdown at the precise moment when the violence was threatening his life. In other words, he was temporarily insane.
Detective Huggins [aloud to himself in the courtroom]: Unbelievable…
Mike: Now, as an expert in the area of the insanity plea what do you recommend we do?
Isaac: A state hospital is really nothing more than a human warehouse. There’s no therapy offered, only chemical restraints. Unfortunately, this will not help Pepe. What Pepe needs is a structured program of intense psychotherapy.

With him, in other words. Pro bono.

[b]Huggins: One big happy family.
Isaac: You upset, detective?
Huggins: Who, me? Upset? We cops love it when a guy walks, especially on a bullshit insanity plea.
Isaac; Come on, we both know this kid’s not dangerous. There was no volition.
Huggins: Listen, listen, I’ve heard it all before. If anyone should be crazy, it’s me. Watching months of work go down the toilet because of you.
Isaac: I’m sensing an ugly hostility here, detective. Come by the office. We’ll talk about it.
Huggins: I’ll tell you what. I’ll stay out of your office and you stay out of mine.

…

Isaac: I got this uncle, right? He used to sell shoes. You shake hands with the guy, he looks at your feet. “Nice instep you got there. What are you, a size nine?” Same with me. He looks at shoes I look at people’s thoughts to figure out what they mean. You do this enough, after a while people, they stop surprising you. I just want to be surprised, Mike.[/b]

He’s about to be.

[b]Heather: What exactly are you trying to do for Diana?
Isaac: I guess I’m doing what all shrinks do. To paraphrase Freud, I’m trying to turn her neurotic misery into general unhappiness so she can be like the rest of us.
Heather: But she’s not like the rest of us.

…

Isaac: Diana told me about the gun.
Heather: What gun?
Isaac: The gun she said you gave her.
Heather: I’m worried about Diana enough. I’m not gonna give her a gun. Believe me, there is no gun.

…

Isaac: Why are you still with him?
Heather: You try divorcing a Greek Orthodox gangster.
Isaac: Gangster? What, does he have a pinstriped suit and carry a violin case, this guy?
Heather [sarcastically]: No, He builds public housing for the poor.
Isaac: Gangster…

…

Jimmy: I thought the workout would relax me, but I’m still on edge.
Heather: I could get you a drink.
Jimmy: It’s a little late for a drink. Why are you standing there? Do it.
Heather: I don’t want to.
Jimmy: You heard me. I know you heard me. Now do it.

…

Diana: I had the dream again. I’m arranging flowers on a table as a centerpiece. I decorate the flowerpot with fancy paper. The paper feels like velvet. I have three kinds of flowers. Lilies, carnations…
Isaac: And the third kind?
Diana: Violence.
Isaac: Violence?
Diana: I didn’t say violence! I said violates! I said violets. Violets. They’re just flowers. I once did floral arranging. Does everything have to be about sex?

…

Isaac: I’ve been treating this attractive, seductive young woman. She’s got an older sister who happens to be married. We’ve met a few times to discuss family history. Then we…
Alan [his colleague]: You didn’t sleep with her?
Isaac: I went through the AMA’s Principles of Ethics. Even the special annotations for psychiatry said nothing about it.
Alan: It’s a cliche, a shrink with a weakness for an unhappy woman.
Isaac: I didn’t say that.
Alan: You didn’t have to. “She chooses he who must choose her.” Now you’re gonna tell me you have feelings for her.
Isaac: Honestly, I can’t stop thinking about her.
Alan: You know as well as I do, romantic love is a projection. You’re not seeing this woman. It’s a vision of her. You’re delusional.
Isaac: I’m not.
Alan: Yes, it is delusional. There is no human being, no woman is so beautiful so special that all of your normal thought patterns get…[/b]

That’s when Heather walks into the office.

[b]Jimmy: You take away the prices and all the polite bullshit and it’s just good food. Plus, we won’t see any of my friends here.
Heather: Don’t you like your friends?
Jimmy: I make good money off those greedy fuckers. And when that stops, the friendship stops. What do you care if they heard? Think their shit don’t stink?
Heather: You can be so crude!
Jimmy: Yes, I can. But you need that. You don’t like it, but you need it. But you need it…to get off.

…

Jimmy [as Heather reaches for a glass of wine]: What do you think you’re doing?

…

Doctor: I’m Dr. Lee.
Jimmy: What’s wrong with her?
Doctor: She has pathological intoxication.
Jimmy: What?
Doctor: Pathological intoxication. Her chart shows she came here last year after a similar incident.
Jimmy: But she had even less to drink this time.
Doctor: People with this syndrome have a dramatic, often violent response to small amounts of alcohol and never remember a thing.

…

Jimmy [to heather in the car]: You’re damaged goods. But you’re also my wife. And if you ever embarrass me like that again I’ll fucking kill you.

…

Jimmy: Was that a look? Were you giving me a look?
Isaac: No, I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at your wife.
Jimmy: My wife. I don’t like people looking at my wife. And I certainly don’t like being looked at. You understand? Now you no-dicks over at Justice either indict me or stay off my ass.[/b]

Neither one of them have a clue.

[b]Isaac: Have you seen any doctors about this? Did they diagnose it? Did they call it… pathological intoxication. Does that mean anything to you?
Heather: I don’t know. Maybe.
Isaac: Had you been drinking last night?
Heather: No, I can’t drink.
Isaac: What did you do?
Heather: I was feeling really sick. I took some cough medicine and went in…
Isaac: Wait. You had cough medicine? How much did you have?
Heather: I don’t know. Quite a bit. You saw how I was feeling.
Isaac: You know this stuff can be like 20, 25% alcohol.

…

Prosecutor: Dr. Grusin have you examined Heather Evans?
Grusin: Yes, I have.
Prosecutor: And did you find her to be suffering from any illness that would impair her normal functioning?
Grusin: No, I did not.
Prosecutor: What about pathological intoxication?
Grusin: I found no evidence of it, whatsoever. I doubt that anyone but a defense attorney would either.
Prosecutor: Why do you doubt the existence of so-called pathological intoxication?
Grusin: Discussion of this disorder is simply an attempt to dazzle a jury with pseudo-scientific jargon, to convince them that alcohol exerts magic evil powers on the brains of a few people.

…

Prosecutor: Why pseudo-scientific, doctor?
Grusin: No one has ever shown any physical evidence of pathological intoxication.
Prosecutor: What would constitute physical evidence?
Grusin: A brain scan. Genetic profile, analysis of blood chemistry. Things that can be tested.

…

Alan: My findings on pathological intoxication were published in the Journal of General Psychiatry. In all, there were 87 patients involved.
Prosecutor: Did any of these 87 patients beat their spouses to death?
Alan [startled]: Oh, dear God, no!
Prosecutor: Thank you. No further questions.
Mike: Request opportunity for redirect.
Judge: Proceed.
Mike [to Alan up on the witness stand]: Can you tell us what some of them did in the psychotic phase of their illness? Didn’t one of them slash her wrists?
Alan: Yes.
Mike: Didn’t one break her son’s arm?
Alan: Yes. One of them threw himself in front of a BART train. Lost a leg. It’s all there in my paper.

…

Heather: So how long do you think I have to stay in here?
Isaac: The law says it could be indefinite. But if your evaluation goes fine, you can be out of here in six to eight weeks.
Heather: But that’s two months.
Diana: Well, you did kill your husband.

…

Lecturer: Everyone has heard Freud’s rhetorical question: “Women what do they want?” Elsewhere, Freud refers to the female sex as “the dark continent.” In his Interpretation of Dreams the man who gave the world “penis envy” declares that women’s libido is essentially masochistic. The evidence? Well, it’s buried deep in chapter six. A patient, dreaming about arranging a floral centerpiece has the poor taste to mix violets with lilies and carnations. The lilies represent purity the carnations, carnal desire. And of course last, but not least the violets standing in for a woman’s unconscious need to be violated. Violently wouldn’t you know? But I would like to paraphrase the good doctor and say that sometimes a violet is just a violet.[/b]

Bingo. Diana’s “dream”. And so Heather’s diabolical plot begins to unravel.

[b]Isaac: Let me guess. Jimmy’s brother was never sole beneficiary?
Mike: No, he was. Right before he checked out a month before the murder. Bone cancer.
Isaac: That’s about the time I met her.
Mike: At that point, Heather became the sole beneficiary.
Isaac: How much?
Mike: The policy was for 2 million. But since she was found not responsible, they have to pay double because, and you’ll love this, technically, the whole thing was an accident. She’s gonna walk out of Overland 4 million richer than when she walked in. I knew I should’ve taken this case for a piece of the action.

…

Isaac: Why did you do it?
Heather: Do what?
Isaac: Just tell me that it evolved – the plan – because you were desperate, because of the emotional and psychological torture. Tell me that…tell me anything. Just don’t say it was for the money. Not something as cold as that.

…

Isaac: You are a very clever woman. You sent me your sister for help. Very concerned, very compassionate. It was all lies. Diana told me. You watched me! You came to court, watched me testify! You auditioned me, like for a part!
Heather: No, she didn’t. She didn’t tell you a thing.
Isaac: Diana told me everything.
Heather: Do you remember that little lead pipe you held at the lighthouse? It was the handle to a dumbbell. The dumbbell. Don’t fuck with me, Isaac!

…

Isaac: You think it was me?
Detective Huggins: At this juncture I know it was. The expert witness is your friend. The lawyer’s your best friend. The sister’s your patient, and you’re banging the accused. Now, if you were me what would you think?
Isaac: Are you arresting me?
Detective Huggins: Without a murder weapon, I can’t do jack.

…

Isaac: Tomorrow at noon I’m bringing two assistant DAs here. They’ll want to hear your story and mine.
Heather: But I’ve already been found not responsible. Haven’t you ever heard of double jeopardy? I can’t be tried twice for the same crime, now, can I?
Isaac: Then you have nothing to worry about.[/b]

Now it’s time for him to con her. And it’s a beaut.

[b]Heather: What’s that? Where’s the dumbbell? WHERE’S THE DUMBELL!?! He’s controlling her! He made her substitute those for the dumbbell! They’re from the planet Bantar, right? How did he get you to do it? You’re fucking her, aren’t you? Bastard! Answer me! ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME!! You don’t understand. They’re framing me. They’re both in on it.
[the “DA” pulls a needle from his bad to give her a shot]
Doctor [giving her the shot]: Of course, Miss Evans.
Heather: You’re doctors?!
Doctor: You know we’re doctors. You’re just confused now. I’m with the review committee.
Forensic advisor: And I consult for the insurance company.
Heather: You liars!
Doctor: You’re very upset, Miss Evans.
Heather: You tricked me! All of you tricked me!
Isaac: Hold it. Hold on I think I can reach her.
Heather: You’re in it together!
Isaac [goes over to her and whispers in her ear]: You were right about double jeopardy. This was the only way.
Heather: You cocksucking son of a bitch! You bastard! Fuck you all! Fuck you all! You lied to me! Let go of me! Fuck you!

…

Doctor: Jesus. When you came to us the other day with your diagnosis, we were skeptical. There was no indication of psychosis. There’s no prior history. She’s worse than you described her. Talk about paranoid. What did she think we were? District attorneys?
Isaac: The anxiety of killing her husband, plus the repeated insults of alcohol have brought on a full-scale organic psychosis. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s further deterioration.
Forensic adviser: Well, why don’t we do a review in six months and take it from there?[/b]

But heather is by no means down.

[b]Diana: What are you gonna do to me?
Heather: Why?
Diana: Because of what I did to you.
Heather: I love you. I love you. Tell me about Isaac.
Diana: You were right. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t even want to be my doctor.
Heather: It’s okay. We still have one more chance.

…

Heather [to Pepe before shooting him]: Wrong girl, pal.

…

Huggins [watching Heather approach]: This ought to be good.

…

Isaac [grabbing the dumbbell out of Heather’s bag]: This is the dumbbell Heather used to kill her husband. Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have touched it.
Huggins: You’re a smart fucker, aren’t you?

…

Isaac [realising the truth about Heather’s troubled childhood]: What you told me about the fire did mean something, didn’t it? It was about your father…and you. It was you your father raped! You couldn’t take it could you? You just snapped! And then you killed him! That night as he was passed out on the sofa soaked in booze all you had to do was strike a match! Maybe your father deserved to die! Maybe Jimmy deserved it too!

…

Isaac: Give me the gun It’s over. It’s over.
Heather [screaming]: It’s not over!! You think you can shrink me like one of your fucking patients!

…

Isaac: Heather was the one who actually committed the crimes. Diana was unstable, victimized by her older sister. It’s perfect.
Mike: Too bad she didn’t let me represent her. You ever think maybe you picked the wrong sister?

…

Man in restaurant: I want to know everything about you, Heather.
Diana: The first thing you should know about me is I’m an only child.
Man: Now you’ve got me. To us.
DIana: I’m really not supposed to drink. Maybe just one sip.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Just as fascinating as the subject of this documentary is the manner in which the director/producer more or less just stumbled into it accidentally:

Director/producer Andrew Jarecki was in the process of making a documentary about people who work as children’s birthday party clowns in New York which led to the discovery of David Friedman’s story. David Friedman was considered the most successful of the city’s party clowns. IMDb

This is a film in which you are genuinely stumped regarding your own reaction to the Friedmans guilt or innocence. Or, rather, I was. I found myself going back to the national hysteria that revolved around folks who were accused of sexually abusing children in day care centers back in the 1980s. The infamous McMartin preschool trial for example.

I also recall my reaction to the Michael Peterson case. It was showcased in a documentary on the Sundance Channel. The Staircase. I remember being shocked that he was found guilty at the end of the trial. The documentary seemed clearly weighted towards his innocence. And yet in following the case from subsequent articles/television documentaries I became increasingly more convince that he was in fact guilty.

So you always have to take these things with a grain of salt. Ultimately, whatever you are viewing/reading becomes embodied in a particular point of view.

Bottom line [mine]: There seems little doubt that Arnold Friedman received [and collected] hard core child pornography. But the part about him and [especially] his son Jesse abusing children in the computer classes seems to be pure bullshit. A case of public hysteria that originated in large part from the criminal justice system itself. And then from the media. In order to sell more advertising.

What is remarkable here is that the son [David] actually recorded the family crumbling apart after Arnold got out of jail on bail.

Here’s one reaction to the film:
slate.com/articles/arts/movi … s_son.html

And here is a video arguing that the Friedmans probably were guilty: youtu.be/qjYWOZgMbHQ
Of course the problem here is that you don’t learn who made this video. Why did they make it? Did they have a political ax to grind?

Look for the consequences of sexual repression. Wilhelm Reich would have had a field day interviewing Arnold and Elaine.

IMDb

[b]Jesse Friedman suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following the release of this film and underwent extensive treatment at a VA Hospital in Boston, MA.

The movie caused some theatre patrons to remain in their seats to argue the innocence of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. This caused theatre owners to complain to the films distributor, Magnolia Pictures.

Following the release of the film, director Andrew Jarecki came under fire for comments he made whilst publicizing the film proclaiming his own ambiguous opinion as to the guilt of the Friedmans. During production, Jarecki had stated outright that he believed the Friedmans were falsely accused and had also provided funds to appeal Jesse Friedman’s conviction.

The film sparked enough renewed interest in the case that Jesse Friedman mounted an appeal to his earlier conviction. While the appeal was denied, the Nassau County District Attorney did agree to re-examine the case and appoint a special review committee to evaluate any impropriety in the original case, including coercion of Friedman’s original confession of guilt. [/b]

Here’s the latest I could find on it: newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/06/24/ … oneration/

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capturing_the_Friedmans
trailer: youtu.be/OVY4ehqJjAA

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS [2003]
Directed by Andrew Jarecki

[b]David [to the camera]: My dad was a cool guy, you know? He was a schoolteacher. And I think that the other kids liked him, and he liked kids. But he didn’t like spending a lot of time with his wife, so he would teach high school during the day and then after school, he would come home and teach piano lessons and later computer lessons in the house. And that was, of course, more time he didn’t have to spend with his wife.

…

David [from his video diary]: Well, this is private, so if you don’t, if you’re not me, then you really shouldn’t be watching this, because this is supposed to be a private situation between me and me. This is between me now and me in the future. So turn it off. Don’t watch this. This is private.
[then his whole demeanor changes]
David: If you’re the fucking, oh, god, the cops. And if you’re the fucking cops, go fuck yourselves. Go fuck yourselves because you’re full of shit.

…

John McDermott [Postal Inspector]: Back in 1984 US Customs had seized some child pornography, addressed from the Netherlands, in the mail to Arnold Friedman. Now, he never got that piece of mail, but his name was forwarded on to us. So what we would do then would be to initiate a correspondence with Arnold in the hopes that we can determine if he is in fact willing to violate the statute again about mailing or receiving child pornography.

…

McDermott: Since he had sent the magazine, he was always asking for it back. So I asked the prosecutors, “let’s grant him his wish. He wants his magazine back.” I dressed up as a mail carrier, knocked on his door, asked him if he was Arnold Friedman. He replied he was. And I said, “I have a package for you. Sign right here.” He did. About an hour later, we went back.[/b]

With a search warrant.

McDermott: In the top dresser door was the open magazine. Well, he thought we would take the magazine and leave, and i said, “no, we have a search warrant. We’re gonna search the whole house for child pornography.”

And nothing then was ever the same.

[b]Elaine [Arnold’s wife]: And this was Arnold’s secret. He liked to look at pictures of boys. And it’s not that he acted on these things. He just wanted to look at these pictures and meditate or…

…

McDermott: And these are listings of the magazines that were found behind the piano. “Young boys & sodomy.” “Incest case histories.” Something called “chicken pickin’s magazine.” And in addition to that, we found evidence of a computer class being taught there by mr. Friedman. And we did seize a list of names that we thought could be students. I remember walking in there saying, “Goddamn. We could have a problem here.” [/b]

So did he “act on” his “secret”? This is where things start to become considerably more ambiguous. Particularly with respect to the Friedman son, Jesse. Here it gets more and more like the McMartin preschool “investigation”.

[b]Det. Frances Galasso [after sending detectives out to interview Friedman’s computer class students]: The parents were becoming impatient. They wanted something done immediately. But you always want to be very careful about how you proceed, because the one thing that you worry about – I know I worried about it all the time – is just charging somebody with this kind of a crime is enough to ruin their lives. So you want to make sure that you have enough evidence and that you’re convinced that you’re making a good charge.

…

Detective: As we conducted more interviews of the children, Jesse’s name started to pop up. And Jesse was there. What did Jesse do? And then eventually we were able to ascertain that Jesse’s role was not one of, you know, helping his dad conduct the computer class, but basically abusing the children himself.

…

Galasso: We didn’t have children telling us that Arnold had slapped them around. But quite a number of the kids reported incidents of being slapped and having their hair pulled or their arms twisted by Jesse. He was, by far, the more violent one.

…

Elaine: Somewhere along the way, I think it was the Nassau County cops, they showed me this magazine, and they said, “you see? Look at this magazine.” And they showed me the magazine. They were embarrassed to show it to me because of what the pictures were. And you know, I didn’t see it. My eyes were in the right direction, but my brain saw nothing. Because when it was all over, the lawyer showed me the magazine, and then I saw it. For the first time, I really saw it. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I mean, I had no concept that this thing even exists in the world, that this magazine would even be in the world. I mean, we had a middle-class home, educated. I had a good family, right? Where did this come from?

…

Howard [Arnold’s brother]: I was the first to visit my brother in prison. And that was a moment in my life I’ll never forget. He came into the room. I was sitting at this table, a lot of tables, and they were crowded. Just awful surroundings. And he didn’t have his glasses on. Without his glasses, he was blind as a bat. They’d taken them off and broken them, stepped on them. He had a smell of urine. They were throwing urine at him. They were threatening to throw him down the stairs. They knew what he was in there for. It was all over the media. And he was half-blind and hadn’t shaved in two days and shivering and cold and scared out of his wits. The first words out of his mouth were, “Howie, they’re gonna kill me, there gonna kill me. Get me out of here.”

…

Howard: My brother and Jesse kept saying they’re innocent. “This is trumped up charges.” And they did a McMartin’s, you know? They somehow got one kid to tell, they got the police to be able to convince the kids, “well, all of your friends said something happened. Didn’t something happen? Something must have happened,” et cetera, et cetera. And they were convinced. They kept saying they were innocent. And I just kept thinking, “I have to believe them.” [/b]

The two renditions:

[b]Former computer class student: I remember one time I slipped one of the sex games out, and I brought it home and everything, and I copied it, and Arnold found out. Because of that, I was raped by him and Jesse at the same time, as punishment to that. I never did it again.

…

Former computer class student: My general recollection of the classes is basically a positive one, is a pleasant one. The types of behaviors which were described, which were, well, just downright satanic in nature. I mean, they make him sound like some kind of brutal sadist, whereas, you know, I had just always thought of him as being kind of a nebbish. The very nature of these charges is so absurd. It seems almost like some kind of grotesque fantasy.

…

Former computer class student: I think, as someone who took the classes, it was just hard to picture even that going on, because I did have a good experience. And I didn’t, you know, see anything, you know, remotely like, you know, like child molestation or child abuse or any child anything going on. What took place in arnold’s classes was pretty much just straight computer lessons. I mean, as ordinary and as boring as you could possibly imagine it.

…

Larry King: We now welcome, also in los angeles, Debbie Nathan. Debbie is an investigative freelance journalist, who has been covering the McMartin and other abuse trials around the country. All these parents are bizarro, huh? They’re all whacked?
Nathan: Well, it’s not really fair, I don’t think to deal simply with these parents or with this particular case. You have to understand that all over the country there is a hysteria. And I don’t think that it’s a question with most of these kids of lying. I think that they have been brainwashed, if you will.

…

Nathan [now to the documentary interviewer]: In the Friedman case, the basic charges were completely implausible. First of all, you’d have to believe that blood is coming out of these children’s orifices, that they’re screaming, that they’re crying, that their clothes are soiled from semen and from blood. And yet their parents show up. Sometimes they show up unannounced. Everything looks fine. Was there any physical evidence in the case that was relevant? Or it was the case really strictly based on the statements of the kids? It was more testimony. There was a dearth of physical evidence.

…

[b]Nathan: I don’t think that they’re sitting around with any kind of diabolical or conspiratorial agenda to go out and falsely accuse Arnold Friedman or railroad Jesse Friedman. But nobody’s critiquing them. Nobody’s telling them that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. Nobody’s saying that we’ve got a problem in this culture with hysteria around this issue. And so they’re really free to let their fantasies fly.

…

Glasso: I think the most overwhelming thing was the enormous amount of child pornography. You would just have to walk into the living room, and it’d be piled around the piano. There were literally foot-high stacks of pornography, in plain view, all around the house. [/b]

Complete bullshit. The photos from the search of the house show none of this.

[b]Nathan: There’s a whole community atmosphere that gets created in a mass-abuse case like this, where the families are talking to each other, they’re going to community meetings, or they’re calling on the phone all the time. They’re seeing each other in group therapy. And there is definitely an element when a community defines itself as a victimized community, that if you’re not victimized you don’t fit into that community.

…

Father of one of the students [his identity concealed]: I appreciated theirs call in the beginning telling me what happened. And then when I told them that we looked into it and my wife and I both felt that nothing happened to our son, it got to be a little pushy situation where they told us that we were in denial, and it absolutely happened to our son.

…

Recording of someone calling the Friedman house: You fucking bitch! I’m gonna kill you! When Jesse gets out of jail, he’s a dead motherfucker. When Arnold gets out of jail, he’s a dead motherfucker. FUCK YOU!! I’LL FUCK YOUR WHOLE FAMILY!!!

…

Nathan: David had just gotten a video camera when this case broke, and so he just started recording the family falling apart. [/b]

And boy do they ever. Though it was mostly Mom against the rest of them.

[b]Elaine: The family was screaming at each other. And everyone wanted me to say, “he didn’t do it.” Well, I wouldn’t do that. I said, “I don’t know.”

…

Jesse: My mother abandoned him, pretty much, wouldn’t talk to him, fought with him constantly, made him sleep on the sofa. And after 33 years of marriage, when your wife, when you’ve been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, you spend 6 weeks in jail for it, you’re trying to build a defense, and your wife leaves you, essentially, my father fell apart.

…

David: My mother is sexually ignorant. As far as I’m concerned, she had sex, I mean everyone thinks their parents only had sex 3 times, you know for each of their siblings. But with my mother, I think it was true.

…

Elaine: And it was like, you know, you read in a book how do you have sex, and you start here, and then you do step step step. And that’s somewhat like what sex was like with Arnold, because I used to say to him, “it’s called foreplay. It’s supposed to be play. It’s supposed to be fun.” And he treated it like work. Like this is what you’re supposed to do when you do it, like washing the dishes.

…

Elaine: Arnold’s mother dated a lot of men and would bring the men into the apartment, and they would have sex in the bed while arnold was there listening. And Arnold said that, because he saw his mother in bed with a man, that when he was adolescent, he was experimenting, as all children do, and he had sex with his brother in bed or something like that. And to me, that’s not what all children do.

…

Nathan [discussing a letter Arnold had sent her]: Then Arnold goes on and says, “my next partners were boys my own age, all of which sexual relations, probably being within norms for my age. However, the emotional impact of these relations was very pronounced and lasted through my adult life. A more normal situation, as probably happened with my partners, would have been to outgrow and forget these episodes. However, I literally fell in love with these boys, and the relations were far more significant to me than they were to my partners.” And then he told me that when he got to be an older teenager, like maybe in his late teens, he started worrying that he was still attracted to kids that were the same age as his brother had been when Arnold was and that really started bothering him. And then after he had his own children, he was worried. He started worrying that maybe he would molest his own children. And at that point, he went to therapy, and the therapist told him, “no, don’t worry. You’ve got everything under control.”

…

David: If my father had the ability to confess to me, yeah, he had done something one time, and that’s how this whole crazy mess got started, it would make a lot more sense. Not that I wanted that to be the case, but you have to find a way to explain the unexplainable.[/b]

Next up: plea bargaining: disconnecting Jesse from Arnold.

[b]Scott Banks [Judge’s legal secretary]: I arranged for Mr. Friedman and his family to get a jury room where they could sit and they could discuss these plea options. And while I didn’t go inside the room except to knock on the door and say where we’re at in terms of what Mr. Friedman wanted to do there was a lot of yelling and crying and screaming going on, coming out of that room.

…

Elaine: When i screamed at arnold, I screamed “you must do it because it’ll help Jesse. Do it for Jesse.”
Jesse: And my brothers were just furious at this notion that my father would go to court and plead guilty. And at one point in all of the chaos my father just started screaming. And there’s uncontrollable tears and he picked up a chair. I remember he threw a chair. He was just screaming about how he wasn’t gonna plead guilty. He didn’t do anything, he’s not gonna plead guilty. And he was furious at my mother and he was just freaking out.

…

Jesse: I’m talking to my father privately and he asked me what he should do. And I could have said to my father “I want you just to walk out of here and go to trial and not plead guilty.” Instead, I remember very clearly saying to him I wanted him to make the decision. And I remember feeling like a really young kid. Kind of looking up to my dad and saying “dad, I,” you know “I want you to be my daddy.” And I would have been really, really proud of him if he had just stood up and said “Elaine, I’m not pleading guilty. We’re going to trial.” But that’s not what happened.

…

Newscaster: The sentence 10 to 30 years. The crime: Sodomizing young boys. Defendant Arnold Friedman had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing more than a dozen youngsters, but this does not end the friedman case. There are still numerous sodomy and sex abuse charges pending against arnold’s son, Jesse Friedman.

…

Peter Panaro [Jesse’s lawyer]: I always believed Jesse. How could this possibly go on for 4 years…children repeatedly sodomized and sexually abused with brutality if you believe the police. And then their parents come to pick them up right after computer class and not one kid is crying…not one kid tells his mother or father what happened in class…not one kid says anything? I find that so incredible that Jesse’s story that nothing happened to me was more believable than the police version of these horrific acts.

…

Panaro: Jesse and I flew all the way to Madison, Wisconsin where we rented a car and drove miles to some town that I couldn’t possibly give you the name of to a federal prison. Who knew more about this case then Arnold Friedman? He knew more about it than Jesse. Jesse was out in the waiting room at this point and this man had this little boy in there who was his son or his stepson, I don’t know but the child was about or years old and they were in the table right next to us. And I was interviewing Arnie and all of a sudden he leaned over and asked me if I could ask the corrections officer or whoever was in charge in the room if we could get another table. And I asked him why, and he said “that little boy over there bouncing on his father’s lap is getting me very excited.” It took me about 15 minutes to regain my composure. I remember that like it was yesterday. I was shocked 'cause even though I was involved in the case now for two months and even though I had studied pedophilia and I knew what these men did to little boys I had never heard somebody actually say it. And I was absolutely disgusted.

…

Jesse: Yeah, my father had the magazines and yes, my father admitted that he was a pedophile and had these fantasies and yes, my father admitted that he was no saint and that there were times that he slipped but I was arrested too and I’m not a child molester. And I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to have to answer for the sins of my father.

…

Jesse: While I was out on bail I put all the charges into a database so that they could be sorted by complainant by time period, by nature of charge. For example, there was one complainant a 10-year-old boy…he says he came to class in the spring of 1986 and during this 10 week session where he was only over my house for an hour and a half once a week he says that there were 31 instances of sexual contact. That’s 3 times a week every single week for 10 straight weeks and then the course ends. In the fall, he re-enrolled for the advanced course and says that he was subjected to 41 more instances of anal and oral sodomy in the next 10 week session and nobody said anything. Week after week, month after month year after year until after the police came knocking on doors and asking questions.

…

Lloyd Doppman [detective, sex crimes unit]: Children want to please very often. They want to give you the answers that you want. Adults do that as well. So you have to be very mindful of the fact that when you’re interviewing a child if the child starts to answer questions your responses should be somewhat in the framework of “and then what happened?” Or, “what happened next?” Or, “what do you remember then?” As opposed to “he did this to you, didn’t he?” Or “she did this to you, didn’t she?” That’s a very, very dangerous type of interview process to use. [/b]

Guess which method the police used here?

[b]Father of one of the students [his identity concealed]: And I listened to the police talking to my son and it got to a point where it wasn’t asking him what happened. It was more of them telling him what happened and that when they didn’t like what he said they kept repeating to him that they know what happened and that he should tell.

…

One of rhe allegedly abused children: What I do remember is the detectives putting me under a lot of pressure to speak up. And at some point, I kind of broke down. I started crying. And when I started to tell them things I was telling myself that it’s not true. I was telling myself, “just say this to them in order to get them off your back.”

…

Nathan: I came across a document regarding a group of children from the Friedman case who were in therapy and it stated that many of them had absolutely no recollection of the abuse and there was some discussion about whether hypnosis would be a good idea now, exactly what you’re not supposed to do. It was the kind of therapy that had a really good chance of messing up kids’ memories and implanting false memories.

…

Elaine: I was told that if he went to trial the judge would give consecutive sentences. Instead of concurrent the sentencing would be consecutive. I said, “oh, my god.”

…

Jesse: She just kept telling me over and over “the only thing to do is to plead guilty and to get the best deal you can. You can’t go to trial. It doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or innocent. You can’t go to trial, because if you go to trial you’re gonna go to prison for the rest of your life.” I said, “but ma, I didn’t do it.” She said, “that doesn’t matter. You have to plead guilty.”

…

Jesse: In 1988 there was no way that a jury in Nassau County who had been reading the newspaper headlines in “newsday” for over a year those people were never going to listen to anything the defense had to say and i was absolutely terrified of going to prison for 100 years.

…

Panaro [after Jesse tells him he wants to plead guilty]: Jesse had always maintained his innocence. I don’t work out deals for people who are innocent. And my first reaction was, “I’m not gonna do it. You’re not guilty, you’re not pleading guilty.” And at that point, he told me that “I have something to tell you.” And with tears rolling down his eyes, literally, he told me that he was abused by his father growing up and that while he never enjoyed the sexual part of that he did enjoy the attention his father gave him and being with his father…and that not everything he had said about nothing happened was true. [/b]

But Jesse denies that this is true. In fact, Jesse claims it was Panaro’s idea:

[b]Jesse: It was Peter Panaro’s fictionalized story that he fed to me and said, “if you say this, it’s gonna look good for you.”

…

Jesse: The private investigator wasn’t coming up with anything helpful. There was not gonna be any defense witnesses. There wasn’t any money to hire experts. Mom was insistent upon there not being a trial. Peter Panaro wasn’t believing me no matter how many times I told him nothing happened. I just ran out of options. [/b]

He cops a plea: 6 to 18 years. He serves 13 of them. Again: Who to believe here? And about what?

But that’s why we invent God, right? He knows.

[iambiguous]

“She’s crazy!” Well, what if she really is? But what does that really mean? How do we make a distinction between behaviors rooted in clinical factors – behaviors derived from the manner in which our brains dysfunction medically – and behaviors derived instead from what can be a tumultuous stresspool whenever human beings interact in one or another environmental context. Nature and nurture in other words. How “in the world” do we untangle them?

This all unfolds in the Sixties. The irony being that, in America today, “mental institutions” are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Well, unless you are affluent. More and more “ordinary folks” with mental, emotional and psychological afflictions just wind up being “cared for” in prisons:

tacreports.org/treatment-behind-bars
jaapl.org/content/35/4/406.full

Oh, and in the UK too:

theguardian.com/society/2014 … h-services

Something to keep in mind:

Susanna Kaysen, the author of the book on which this film is based, has stated that she really hates the movie and has described it on more than one occasion as “melodramatic drivel.” IMDb

I think that this is true…but I don’t believe the film is just “melodramatic drivel”. It’s somewhere inbetween. Though a lot closer to Kaysen’s estimation, alas. I have read the book. And, in fact, by coincidence, I am posting a number of quotes from it right now on my “mundane ironist” thread. The fact is, in almost all cases, “the book” is going to provide considerably more depth to the ideas the author wishes to convey. But it was still interesting to explore the characters cinematically.

Also, the relationship between mental illness and class is not explored at all. Here the patients almost all come from upper middle class suburban communities. But, sure, we all know how alienating that can be. Especially as portrayed in film.

Bottom line: So, are you better off being crazy…or normal? In other words, which is worse?

Look for Peggy Olsen. Polly here. Torch.

IMDb

Angelina Jolie avoided any communication with Winona Ryder when making this movie claiming that if she saw anything human about Winona Ryder, she wouldn’t have been able to act out the sociopath character of Lisa Rowe as effectively.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl,Interrupted(film
trailer: youtu.be/5BHHUBZf7y4

GIRL, INTERRUPTED [1999]
Written in part and directed by James Mangold

[b]Susanna [voiceover]: Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60s. Or maybe I was just a girl…interrupted.

…

Susanna: You shouId check my hand. There’s no bones in it.
Doctor: A wrist banger.

…

Dr. Crumble: Susanna…if you had no bones in your hand how did you pick up the aspirin?
Susanna: By then, they’d come back.
Dr. Crumble: I see.
Susanna: No, you don’t.
Dr. Crumble: WeII, induIge me, then. ExpIain it to me.
Susanna: ExpIain what? ExpIain to a doctor that the Iaws of physics can be suspended? That what goes up may not come down? ExpIain that time can move backwards and forwards and now to then and back again and you can’t controI it?

…

Susanna: You don’t mean CIaymoore?
Dr. Crumble: Susanna, four days ago you chased a bottle of aspirin, with a bottle of vodka.
Susanna: I had a headache.

…

Janet: I want my fucking clothes!
Valerie: Then you’ll have to eat something, won’t you?
Janet [singing]: Oh Lordy, pick a bale o’ cotton / Oh Lordy, pick a bale o’ hay / Gotta jump down spin around pick a bale o’ cotton / Jump down spin around, pick a bale o’ hay…
Valerie [who is black, to Susanna]: She thinks that bothers me.

…

Polly [explaining Lisa’s outburst]: Jamie was Lisa’s best friend. She was sad last week after Lisa ran away, so she hung herself with a volleyball net.

…

Susanna: Well, what about you? Why are you here?
Georgina: Pseudologia fantastica.
Susanna: What’s that?
Georgina: I’m a pathoIogicaI Iiar.

…

Lisa: So, have you had your first Melvin yet?
Susanna: Who’s that?
Lisa: Bald guy with a little pecker and a fat wife. You’re ther-rapist, sweet pea. Unless, ah… unless they’re givin’ you shocks. Or, God forbid lettin’ you out. Then you get to see the great wonderful Dr. Dyke.

…

Susanna: Everyone here is fucking crazy!
Dr. Potts [Melvin]: You want to go home.
Susanna: Same problem.

…

Susanna: I didn’t try to kill myself.
Dr. Potts: What were you trying to do?
Susanna: I was just trying to make the shit stop.

…

Daisy: I Iike my dad’s chicken. When I eat something eIse, I puke.
Susanna: But why do you eat it here? Why don’t you Iike to go to the cafeteria?
Daisy: Which do you like better? Taking a dump alone or with Valerie watching?
Susanna: Alone.
Daisy: Everyone likes to be alone when it comes out. I like to be alone when it goes in. To me, the cafeteria is like being with twenty girls all at once taking a dump.

…

Susanna: Lisa, is Daisy really getting out?
Lisa: Yeah, she coughed up a big one.
Susanna: But how could - I mean she’s insane.
Lisa: Yeah, well that’s what ther-rape-me is all about. That’s why fuckin’ Freud’s picture’s on every shrink’s wall. He created a fuckin’ industry. You lie down, you confess your secrets and you’re saved. Ca-ching! The more you confess, the more they think about settin’ you free.
Susanna: But what if you don’t have a secret?
Lisa: Then you’re a lifer, like me.

…

Janet: Good thing this pIace works on a sliding scaIe. We get to mingle with the lock-picking trash.

…

Janet: When they built this place they put the tunnels in so the loons didn’t have to go anywhere in the cold.
Susanna: I must’ve missed that in the brochure.

…

Susanna [reading from a book]: “Borderline Personality Disorder. An instability of self-image, relationships and mood… uncertain about goals, impulsive in activities that are self-damaging, such as casual sex.”
Lisa: I like that.
Susanna: “Social contrariness and a generally pessimistic attitude are often observed.” Well, that’s me.
Lisa: That’s everybody.
Susanna: I mean, what kind of sex isn’t casual?

…

Valerie: Did you enjoy the fresh air, Lisa?
Lisa: Yeah I did, Val. Thanks.
Valerie: Good, 'cause it’s the last time you’re leaving the ward.
Lisa: Is that a dare or a double dare?

…

Lisa: Taking five minutes for me wouId be a dereIiction of duty? What if I had a punctured an artery? You’d go on your rounds, ignoring my wounds?
Margie: Stop it.
Lisa: Stop what? Look at this. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Margie: That’s enough!
Lisa: Take one step and I’II jam this in my aorta!
Valerie: Stop it, Lisa. Your aorta is in your chest.
Lisa: Good to know.

…

Toby [who has been drafted]: My wheeIs are here.
Susanna: Wait. What are we doing?
Toby: We’re going to Canada. You’re not crazy. Okay? You don’t need to be here.
Susanna: I tried to kiII myseIf, Toby.
Toby: You took some aspirin.
Susanna: I took a bottIe of aspirin.
Toby: That buys you a year in this pIace? That’s buIIshit, okay? They’re breaking you. Come on. AII right? Everything’s changing, man. What do they know about being normaI?
Susanna: I have friends in here.
Toby: Who? Them? Those girIs…Susanna…they’re eating grapes off of the waIIpaper. They’re insane.
Susanna: If they are, I am.

…

Lisa [to Susanna]: If talking were shit we’d be out of here by now.

…

Susanna [to Dr Wick]: Am I in trouble for kissing an orderly, or for giving my boyfriend a blowjob?

…

Susanna: I signed myself in, I can sign myself out.
Dr. Wick: You signed yourself into our care. We decide when you leave. You’re not ready for it, Susanna. Your progress has plateaued. Does that disappoint you?
Susanna: I’m ambivalent. In fact that’s my new favorite word.
Dr. Wick: Do you know what that means, ambivalence?
Susanna: I don’t care.
Dr. Wick: If it’s your favorite word, I would’ve thought you would…
Susanna: It means I don’t care. That’s what it means.
Dr. Wick: On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings…in opposition. The prefix, as in “ambidextrous,” means “both.” The rest of it, in Latin, means “vigor.” The word suggests that you are torn…torn between two opposing courses of action.

…

Dr. Wick: Is there something about sex which lifts your feelings of despair?
Susanna: Have you ever had sex?

…

Susanna: Where the fuck is Lisa?
Valerie: Can’t hack it without her?
Susanna: You banish her for singing to Polly. We were trying to help her! We were trying to heip her! This place is a fucking fascist torture chamber!
Valerie: No. I worked in state hospitals. This place is a five-star hotel.

…

Valerie: You know, I can take a lot of crazy shit from a lot of crazy people. But you - you are not crazy.
Susanna: Oh yeah? Then what’s wrong with me? What the fuck is going on inside my head? Tell me, Dr. Val, what’s your diag-nonsense?
Valerie [hovering over Susanna]: You are a lazy, self-indulgent, little girl, who is making herself crazy.
Susanna: Is that your “professional” opinion? Is that what you’ve learned in your advanced studies at night school for Negro welfare mothers? I mean, Melvin doesn’t have a clue, Wick is a psycho and you…you pretend to be a doctor. You review the charts and dole out meds. But you’s ain’t no doctor, Miss Valerie. You’s just a little black nursemaid.
Valerie: And you’re just throwing it all away.

…

Lisa [to Daisy]: Here you are playing Betty Crocker and you’re cut up like a goddamn Virginia ham.

…

Lisa: Help me understand, Daisy. I thought you didn’t do Valium. Tell me how this works. Tell me that you don’t drag that blade across your skin and pray for the courage to press down. Tell me how your daddy helps you cope with that. Illuminate me.
Daisy: My father loves me.
Lisa: I bet. With every inch of his manhood.
Daisy: I’m going to sleep now. Please be gone in the morning.

…

Daisy: You’re just jealous, Lisa… because I got better… because I was released… because I have a chance… at a life.
Lisa: They didn’t release you ‘cause you’re better, Daisy, they just gave up. You call this a life, hmm? Taking Daddy’s money, buying your dollies and your knick-knacks and eatin’ his fuckin’ chicken, fattening up like a prize fuckin’ heifer? You changed the scenery, but not the fucking situation - and the warden makes house calls. And everybody knows. Everybody knows. That he fucks you. What they don’t know is that you like it. Hmm? You like it.
Susanna: Shut the fuck up!
Lisa: Man, it’s cooI. It’s okay. It’s fucking fine. A man is a dick is a man is a dick is a chicken…is a dad…is a VaIium, a specuIum, whatever.

…

Susanna [on the phone after Daisy hung herself]: I need an ambulance!
Lisa: Make it a hearse.

…

Susanna [to Lisa]: First, you pressed her buttons. Now you’re taking her money.

…

Dr. Potts: We shouId send someone out for a litter box.

…

Susanna: I couIdn’t stand up to Lisa. A decent person wouId have done something. Shut her up. Gone upstairs. TaIked to Daisy.
Valerie: What would you have said to her?
Susanna: I don’t know. That I was sorry. That I will never know what it was like to be her. But I know what it’s like to want to die.
Valerie: Susanna, it’s all well and good to tell me all this; but you gotta tell some of this to your doctors.
Susanna: How the hell am I supposed to recover when I don’t even understand my disease?
Valerie: But you do understand it. You spoke very clearly about it a second ago. But I think what you’ve gotta do is put it down. Put it away. Put it in your notebook, but get it out of yourself. Away so you can’t curl up with it anymore.
Susanna: Lisa thinks it’s a gift. That it lets you see the truth.
Valerie: Lisa’s been here for eight years.

…

Valerie [to Susanna]: Do not drop your anchor here.

…

Susanna [voiceover]: When you don’t want to feel, death can seem like a dream. But seeing death, really seeing it, makes dreaming about it fucking ridiculous. Maybe, there’s a moment growing up when something peels back…Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can’t believe our minds…All I know is that I began to feel things again. Whatever I was, I knew there was only one way back to the world and that was to use the place to talk. So I saw the great and wonderful Dr. Wick three times a week and I let her hear every thought in my head. [/b]

On the other hand, just because this works for her…

[b]Susanna [after Lisa steals her diary and reads it aloud to Georgina and Polly]: What the fuck are you doing, Lisa?
Lisa: I’m playing the villain, baby, just like you want. I try to give you everything you want.
Susanna: No you don’t.
Lisa: You wanted your file, I found you your file. You wanted out, I got you out. You needed money, I found you some. I’m fucking consistent. I told you the truth–I didn’t write it down in a fucking book! I told you to your face. And I told Daisy to her face - what everybody knew and wouldn’t say, and she killed herself. And I played the fucking villain, just like you wanted.
Susanna: Why would I want that?
Lisa: Because it makes you the good guy, sweet pea. You come back all sweetness and light, and sad and contrite, and everybody congratulating you on your bravery. And meanwhile, I’m blowing the guys at the bus station for the money that was in her fucking robe!

…

Lisa: What, you don’t like me anymore?
Susanna: No, I don’t!
Lisa: Because you’re free? You think you’re free? I’m free! You don’t know what freedom is!
Susanna: Please, Lisa!
Lisa: I can breathe! And you…you’ll go choke on your average fucking mediocre life!

…

Lisa: You know, there’s too many buttons in the world. There’s too many buttons and they’re just - There’s way too many just begging to be pressed, they’re just begging to be pressed, you know? They’re just - they’re just begging to be pressed, and it makes me wonder, it really makes me fucking wonder, why doesn’t anyone ever press mine? Why am I so neglected? Why doesn’t anyone reach in and rip out the truth and tell me that I’m a fucking whore, or that my parents wish I were dead?
Susanna: Because you’re dead already, Lisa! No one cares if you die, Lisa, because your dead already. Your heart is cold. That’s why you keep coming back here. You’re not free. You need this place, you need it to feel alive. It’s pathetic.
[Lisa falls down to her knees and cries in despair]
Susanna: I’ve wasted a year of my life. Maybe everybody out there is a liar. And maybe the whole world is “stupid” and “ignorant”. But I’d rather be in it. I’d rather be fucking in it, then down here with you. [/b]

In other words, even if that means being normal. Or, sure, maybe there are places in between being crazy and normal. For example, I know that’s where I am.

[b]Valerie [to Susanna]: Remember me when you shave your legs.

…

Susanna [voiceover]: Declared healthy and sent back into the world. My final diagnosis: a recovered borderline. What that means, I still don’t know. Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Two people here have a set of “basic beliefs”. Then something extraordinary happens and those beliefs get put to the test.

And isn’t that what I have argued here for months now? How “I” is rooted [often profoundly] in just such shifting circumstantial contexts?

That this is based on a true story then is really beside the point. It is simply how human existence is “situated” out in a particular world that can only really be understood by acknowledging the implications of contingency, chance and change.

With or without God.

The Catholic Church is everywhere here. It comes to represent the manner in which some folks see “organized religion” as encompassing so much that is Evil in the world. Though one must be careful not to confuse “The Church” with God. Or so some will argue.

Besides, those in the Catholic Church [then as now] truly did believe that what they were doing was the right thing to do. That, in other words, it genuinely reflected the will of their God. Still, intentions [like motivation] can get really tricky here.

Philomena, for example, has been used [and abused] by The Church but she still stays loyal to both the institution and to God. She is at one with “the masses” too. For example, her idea of a good book is a romance novel. Martin, on the other hand, is a cynical atheist, an ex-jouralist who is bent on writting a book on the Russian Revolution.

As it turned out, Philomena’s son was a “key advisor for the the Republican National Committee during the Reagan administration” and the “Chief Legal Counsel to President George Bush Senior.”

But it also turned out that he had already died. From AIDS.

Still: Think of how his life would have [or could have] been profoundly different had he not been sold to the family from America.

IMDb

[b]There are flashbacks which are done with “home movies”. Some of these were created for the film but some of them are from actual footage of her real son.

In the United States, the MPAA gave the film an ‘R’ rating for ambiguous usage of the “F-word” (usually, only one non-sexual utterance of the word is permitted for ‘PG-13’). A lengthy appeals process ensued, with producer Harvey Weinstein and actor/writer Steve Coogan testifying at the hearings in Los Angeles. The Weinstein Company won their appeal for ‘PG-13’ on November 13, 2013, nearly a week before the film’s scheduled theatrical release. [/b]

Can you believe it? Of course you can.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomena_(film
trailer: youtu.be/x6ToSr_LSKU

PHILOMENA [2013]
Directed by Stephen Frears

[b]Wife: There you are. This was embarrassing. Father Tunney asked me where you disappeared to.
Martin: Well, I do not believe in God and I think he can tell.

…

[Philomena as a young girl is givng birth in a convent]
Sister: I do not know what to do! We need to call a doctor. The baby is the wrong way around. It’s breech!
Mother Superior: It’s all in God’s hands. The pain is her penance.

…

Jane: I overheard that you are a journalist. I know this woman, she had a baby when she was a teenager, and she kept it a secret for 50 years. I just found out today. Nuns took the baby away and she was forced to give it up for adoption.
Martin: Well, you know, I’m working on a book about Russian history at the moment. That’s my thing. What you’re talking about is what they call a human interest story; I don’t do those.
Jane: Why not?
Martin: Because “human interest story” is a euphemism for stories about weak-minded, vulnerable, ignorant people, to fill in newspapers read by vulnerable, weak-minded, ignorant people.
[pause]
Martin: Not that you are.

…

Martin [later to his wife]: Do you think I should do a human interest story?

…

Philomena: My father just left me with the nuns. He was so ashamed, he told everyone I was dead. My family never visited me. After you’d had your baby, you had to stay in the abbey for four years. In order to repay the sisters for taking you in, you had to work.[/b]

As in The Magdalene Sisters. She worked in the laundry 7 days a week. 2,555 days total.

[b]Philomena [to Martin]: We were allowed to see our children for one hour a day.

…

Philomena [to Martin]: We all knew what it meant when a big car arrived.

…

Philomena: They’d only come for Mary, but Anthony wouldn’t let her out of his sight. They were inseparable.
Jane: I think that what they did to you was evil.
Philomena: No, no, I don’t like that word.
Martin: No, no. Evil’s good. Story-wise, I mean.

…

Philomena: Do you believe in God, Martin?
Martin: Oh. well, where to start, Huh? I’ve always that that was a very difficult question to give a simple answer to.

…

Sister Claire: I’m Sister Claire.
Martin: Yes, hello…I was just admiring your picture of Jayne Mansfield.
Sister Claire: No, that’s Jane Russell. Jayne Mansfield was the blonde one.
Martin: Yes, of course. They were both very big…I mean, the two of them…huge…their careers.

…

Martin [frustrated]: I asked a question.
Sister Claire: You’re a journalist.
Martin: Yes. Well, I used to be.
Philomena: He’s a Roman Catholic.
Martin: Yes. Well, I used to be.

…

Martin: It’s funny isn’t it? All the pieces of paper designed to help you find him have been destroyed. But guess what? The one piece of paper designed to stop you from finding him has been lovingly preserved. God in His infinite wisdom has decided to spare that from the flames.
Philomena: I signed it because I believed that I had committed a terrible sin and had to be punished. But what made it so much worse was that I enjoyed it.
Martin [confused]: What?
Philomena: The sex. Oh, it was wonderful Martin, I thought I was floating on air. But after I had the sex, I thought anything that feels so lovely must be wrong.
Martin [shaking his head]: Fucking Catholics.

…

Martin: It’s just, why would God bestow upon us a sexual desire that he then wants us to resist? Is it…is it some weird game he’s invented to alleviate the boredom of being omnipotent? It baffles me. And I think I’m pretty clever.
Philomena: We’ll, maybe you’re not.

…

Martin: How did that fire start - do you know?
Bartender: I should think they put a match to it.
Martin: Who?
Bartender: The Sisters. Sure they had a great fire out the back in the field.
Martin: So…the building wasn’t damaged?
Bartender: They had a fuckin’ big bonfire, burnt all the records. Thousands of ‘em.
Martin: Why?
Bartender: This was years ago. I suppose they were embarrassed about selling all them babies to America.
Martin: You say they were sold to Americans?
Bartender: A lot of the Yanks came over to Ireland to look for babies. They were the only ones who could afford them.
Bartender’s mother: A thousand pounds. Jane Russell bought a baby. From Derry, in 1952.
Martin: That’s unbelievable…babies were sold?
Mother: If you were a Catholic with a thousand pounds you could buy a baby. Jane Russell bought one to take home with her.

…

Philomena: I’m getting scared…now we’re getting closer. All these years, wondering whether Anthony was in trouble, or in prison or goodness knows what. As long as I didn’t know, I could always tell myself that he was happy somewhere, and he was doing all right. But what if he died in Vietnam? Or came back with no legs, or lived on the streets? What if he was a drug addict Martin, or…what if he was obese?
Martin (Incredulous): Obese?
Philomena: I watched this documentary that said a lot of Americans are huge…what if that’s happened to him?
Martin: But what on earth makes you think he’d be obese?
Philomena: Well, because of the size of the portions here!

…

Kate [Martin’s wife on the phone]: How’s Philomena?
Martin [sighing]: Well, I have now seen, first hand, what a lifetime’s diet of Reader’s Digest, the Daily Mail and romance novels can do to a person’s brain.

…

Martin [to Kate about Philomena]: She keeps telling all the hotel staff how kind they are - she must think they’re volunteers. She told four people today that they’re one in a million. What are the chances of that?

…

Martin: He died. He died 8 years ago.
Sally [from the newspaper]: What did he die of?
Martin: I don’t know, I didn’t find out. We’re at the airport now.
Sally: Wait - you’re at the airport?
Martin: Yeh. Obviously she wants to get back home, be with her daughter.
Sally: What about the story?
Martin (confused): Well…he’s dead.
Sally: Dead or alive, happy or sad - you said it - they’re both good. Spin it, find a story…
Martin: Yeah, but if I stay here and she goes, no-one’s going to answer my questions.
Sally: Then keep her there.
Martin: What? Come on…she’s in pieces. It’s like she’s lost him all over again.
Sally: That’s great - write that line down.
Martin: Are you serious?
Sally: Yes, you signed a contract. Call me when you’ve got something.
[she hangs up]

…

Philomena: I remember that day at the fair, his father made me laugh by pretending to be an old man. And then I made him laugh by pretending to be an old lady. And now I am one…I’ll never know if Anthony ever thought about me. I’ll never be able to say I’m sorry.

…

Philomena: Martin, this man looks just like you.[/b]

File this one under “ASTONISHING COINCIDENCES”

[b]Philomena [looking at a photograph of Anthony her son]: He looks very happy here, who’s this fella?
Marcia: That’s his, er, friend - Pete.
Philomena: Were you his girlfriend, Marcia?
Marcia: Oh no. I loved Michael but not in that way. I don’t know if you knew, but he was gay. I would accompany him when he went to official functions because being gay was frowned upon in the Republican party. But he was very charming and very charismatic.

…

Philomena: I assume my son died from AIDS.
Mary: Yes. He did. He wasn’t too happy with himself, last couple of years of his life working for the Republicans. No. He was pretty mixed up about it.
[Philomena looks up puzzled]
Martin [explaining]: The Republicans cut funding into Aids research because they blamed the epidemic on gay lifestyles.

…

Philomena: I’d like to stop off and go to confession. We passed a church on the way here.
Martin: Why do you feel the need to go to confession?
Philomena: Well…to confess my sins of course.
Martin: What sins? It’s the Catholic Church that should go to confession, not you. "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I incareated a load of young women against their will, used them as slave labor, then sold their babies to the highest bidder.
Philomena: I just hope God isn’t listening to you.
Martin: Well, I don’t believe in God. Look, no thunderbolt.
Philomena: What are you trying to prove?
Martin: Nothing. Just that you don’t need religion to lead a happy and balanced life.
Philomena: Are you happy and balanced then?

…

Martin: I’m a jouranlist, Philomena. We ask questions, we don’t believe something is true just because someone told us it’s the truth. Yet what does the Bible say, “Happy are those who do not see, yet believe”. Hooray for blind faith and ignorance.
Philomena: And what do you believe in? Picking holes in what everyone else does?

…

Martin [as Philomena is about to go inti the church]: Read a very funny headline in a satirical newspaper the other day, about the earthquake in Turkey. It said, “GOD OUTDOES TERRORISTS YET AGAIN”. Found that very amusing…Why God feels the need to occasionally wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people escapes me. You should ask him about that while you’re in there. He’ll probably say He moves in mysterious ways.
Philomena: No, I think he would say that you are a fucking idiot.

…

Sally [on the phone]: What have you got for me?
Martin: Okay, well he was a bigshot lawyer in the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Sally: You’re kidding - that’s amazing!
Martin: And at the same time he was a closet homosexual who died of AIDS.
Sally: Oh. This is perfect for the weekend section.

…

Martin: You haven’t done anything wrong. You are entitled to find out who your son was.
Philomena: Well, you heard what Mary said she said he never gave me a second thought. He wasn’t my Anthony he was somebody else’s Michael. He probably hated the thought of me.
Martin: You don’t know that Philomena.
Philomena: I should never have let him out of my sight.

…

Martin [points to a symbol etched on a glass]: What’s that, there? On the side of the glass. What’s that?
Philomena: It’s a Celtic harp.
Martin: Right.
[He shows her a photograph of Anthony on the computer. On his jacket lapel he is wearing a gold Celtic Harp pin]
Martin: And what’s that?
Philomena: A Celtic Harp.
Martin: If he cared so little about where he came from, why would he wear something so Irish?
Philomena: Perhaps he played the harp? He was gay.
Martin: He didn’t play the harp.

…

Martin [viewing a video of Anthony]: Wait…
Philomena: What?
Pete: What? What’s wrong?
Martin: He went to Ireland? He went to Roscrea…?
Pete: Yeah. I took him. He was looking for you, Philomena.
Philomena: He came to look for me?
Martin: That nun…I saw her at Roscrea on our last trip.
Philomena: Sister Hildegard.
Martin: She’s very old now but it was definitely her.
Philomena: They always told me they didn’t know where Anthony was.
Pete [looking confused]: But…they told us that they couldn’t find you. They said you’d abandoned him as a baby.
Martin: She’s been looking for him. She spent her whole life trying to find him…
Philomena [her voice voice filled of emotion]: I did not abandon my child.

…

Pete: He’s there now.
Martin: What do you mean?
Pete: I had this huge standoff with his father. He wanted him buried in the US, but it was your son’s dying wish. He said he wanted to go home. He’s buried at Roscrea.

…

Philomena [back at Roscrea]: We’ve come full citcle.
Martin: Yes. “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
Philomena: That’s lovely, Martin. Did you just think of that?

…

Martin: Shall we go in?
Philomena: You’re not going to make a scene in there are you?
Martin: I’m just going to ask a few questions. And I don’t want any tea, and I don’t want any cake.

…

Priest: I’m sorry I think your whole manner, coming in to a holy place like this, and behaving the way you have, is absolutely disgusting.
Martin: I’ll tell you what’s disgusting, lying to a dying man.
(he turns to Sister Hildegarde]
Martin: You could have given them a few precious moments with his mother before he passed away - but you chose to lie. That’s disgusting. Not very Christian is it?
Sister Hildegarde: Let me tell you something - I have kept my vow of chastity my whole life. Self denial and mortification of the flesh, that’s what brings us closer to God. Those girls have nobody to blame but themselves, and their own carnal incontinence.
Martin: You mean they had sex?

…

Martin: What you can do is say sorry! How about that? Apologise. And then you can go out there and clear all the weeds and crap off the graves of the mothers and babies who died here. Stop trying to hide them away.
Sister Hildegrade: Their suffering was atonement for their sins.
Martin: One of them was fourteen years old!
Philomena (Sharply): That’s enough Martin!
Sister Hildegarde: The Lord Jesus Christ will be my judge - not the likes of you.
Martin: Really? Because I think if Jesus was here right now he’d tip you out of that fucking wheelchair - and you wouldn’t get up and walk.

…

Martin (Incredulous): Why are you apologizing to them? Anthony was dying of AIDS and she still wouldn’t tell him about you!
Philomena: I know! But it happened to me. Not you. And it’s up to me what to doabout all this. It’s my choice.
Martin: So you’re just going to do nothing?
Philomena: No. I’m going to forgive.
(she turns to Sister Hildegarde)
Philomena: Sister Hildegarde, I want you to know that I forgive you.
Martin [floored]: What…? Just like that?!
Philomena: It’s not ‘just like that’! It’s hard. It’s a hard thing to do. I don’t want to hate people. Look at you. I don’t want to be like you.
Martin: I’m angry!
Philomena: I know. It must be exhausting.

…

Martin [to Sister Hildegarde as he walks out]: Well…I couldn’t forgive you.

…

Title card: Martin Sixsmith published “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee” in 2009. Thousands more adopted Irish children and their “shamed” mothers are still trying to find each other.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Let’s separate the men from the boys. In particular, a decent, respectable, mature man and a boy who is basically a complete asshole. Only he is not really a boy anymore at all. Instead, he is one of those grown men who absolutely refuse to grow up. On the other hand, he is quite charming and quite handsome. So you can well imagine why an otherwise level headed woman like Emma might find herself falling for him.

Murphy, however is rather enigmatic. He doesn’t reveal a whole lot about himself. For example, you’re not even really sure if he is more a cconservative liberal or a liberal conservative.

But he has worked hard all his life and has managed to acquire the sort of life that any man could be proud of. Same with Emma. Only she’s more squarely enscounced in the working class. And she has seen more than her fair share of hard times. And she married that asshole. But she’s a hard worker too. And she never gives up. She has just moved with her son into this busted up ranch which she plans on fixing up and using to board horses. To earn a living.

You just can’t help but to root for them.

Small town America the way some folks will always want to remember it. In their heads more often than not. Let’s just say that [at times] this is the hopelessly idealized Hollywood rendition of it.

But then the complete asshole rolls back into Emma’s life. And, as you might imagine, he and Murphy don’t get along.

James Garner was nominated for an Oscar as best actor for his role here.

IMDb

One of the few films to successfully appeal its MPAA rating. In a pivotal scene with Murphy, Bobby Jack asks him if he and Emma have been “fucking”. The MPAA “automatic language rule” normally does not allow even a single instance of a “sexually derived” vulgarity, in a sexual context, in a PG-13 release.

Oh, well. Here we go again…

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy’s_Romance
trailer: youtu.be/HoX-xki1yHQ

MURPHY’S ROMANCE [1985]
Directed by Martin Ritt

[b]Murphy [to Emma, who’s about to put a flyer on his windshield]: Lady, you’re covering up my causes.
[NO NUKES…RE-FOREST AMERICA]
Emma: Oh, can I put it in your window?
Murphy: Let me see what it is.
[she hands him a flyer and he reads it – advertising her services boarding horses]
Murphy: I’m for free enterprise. Put it up.

…

Emma: What kind of town is this this?
Murphy: Oh, it’s small, friendly, nosy. You can carry a gun but you can’t get an abortion.
Emma: Well I don’t want to do either.

…

Murphy: Where are you from?
Emma: This time Modesto, California.
Murphy: Oh, then you know the rules.
Emma: The rules? Oh, like don’t sit around in your bathrobe after 10 o’clock? Don’t mess with a married man?
Murphy: That’s part of it. The rest of it is we’ve got a Rhodes Scholar, we’ve got a homosexual, we’ve got marijuana growing in with the tomatoes. We’ve even got a man who wears his wife’s nightgown. We’re in the mainstream.
Emma: We’ll not quite. Today I got called Honey and Missy and a Lady thrown in there.
Murphy: Well, they’re not too familiar with the ERA. If it’s consciousness raising you’re looking for you’ll have to head on east.[/b]

But no folks of color. It couldn’t possibly be whiter. Give or take the occasional Native American. And they are only mentioned in passing.

[b]Emma: Looks like you don’t watch much late night TV.
Murphy: No, I’m pretty much booked up. You see, I’m a widower. That’s like catnip to a cat, in a town where the ladies outnumber you ten to one.

…

Emma: So, what are you, the town oddball?
Murphy: When I’m pushed, I shove.
Emma: Don’t you know you can’t fight City Hall?
Murphy: You can wrestle 'em.

…

Emma [after being turned down for a loan by the bank]: I’d go out on the streets, but you’ve only got one.

…

Murphy: What’s wrong?
Emma: I need a loan and I can’t get one. Hey, you’re a big man in this town, aren’t you? How’d you like to loan me some money?
Murphy [kind of abruptly]: No.
Emma: Oh, that was really friendly.
Murphy: We’re not friends. Look, I don’t know you. I don’t know your character.
Emma: We’ll it’s just like everybody elses. It’s good sometimes, it’s bad sometimes. But I tell you, I’m up every morning at dawn and I don’t quit til it’s dark. I worked damn hard for all these callouses.
Murphy [reading from a ledger]: I’m carrying these people on my books. Helen Taylor was taken off medicare because they were not quite sure if she needed a wheelchair for her broken back. Now, Andy Stern, he was fired two days before his pension was to start after 30 years with the company. Stu Harris still needs digitalis. You’re way down the line.
Emma: I have an uncle in Dallas who would call you a bleeding heart liberal.
Murphy [getting angry]: Lady, I don’t give a diddly-shit what they call me. I don’t know if the organ is bleeding or not but according to my EKG, I’ve got one.

…

Emma: You’re too tapped out to make me a loan, but you can come up with a $1,000 to spend on a horse. Not that you owe me anything, of course.
[then]
Emma: Well, you got a fine horse. Where are you going to keep him?
Murphy: With you.
[he walks on as Emma stops in her tracks]
Emma: Oh.

…

Emma [after Murphy enumerates all the things he has an interest in]: Well that ought to keep you young.
Murphy: Well, it takes something more than that.
Emma: Like what?
Murphy: Like something that puts the heart back into it.
Emma: Like…loving somebody.
Murphy: That’ right.

…

Teenager [after running Emma off the road]: Lady, are you alright?
Emma: I am if you’re insured.
Teenager: I ain’t.

…

Murphy: It might be the ball cock.
Emma: Most problems start there.

…

Murphy: Mister, I didn’t care to speak in front of your boy but you’re cheating. You’re dealing from under the deck and we’re only playing for matchsticks.
Bobby Jack: Well, I’m usually playing for eatin’ money. I guess I picked up a bad habit.
Murphy: Well, lose it around here.

…

Jake: I saw what my Dad did playing cards.
Murphy: Maybe it’s a good thing you did.
Jake: He did it twice.
Murphy: You can take after him or not. It’s up to you.

…

Margaret: He probably just comes to your place for the company. He sure seems cheered up.
Emma: I’ve never seen him down.
Margaret: Oh, Honey, that man was a wreck. He stayed drunk the first year. Never spoke to a soul the second. His wife died.
Emma: Was she sick for very long?
Margaret: Never a day in her life. She just turned around to say something to him and she dropped dead.

…

Bobby Jake: You know what I think, Dad.
Murphy: Could we sever this family relationship. I’m not your dad…and I wouldn’t be too happy about it if I were.
Bobby Jake: I think you’re banging Emma.
[long pause]
Murphy: Banging. Kind of an ugly expression for that particular pleasure.
Bobby Jack: How about fucking?
Murphy: I don’t like that one a whole lot better.
Bobby Jack: But that’s what’s going on isn’t it?
Murphy: If I had that privelege I wouldn’t be taking it up with you over a garbage can.
Bobby Jack: Well, I’m taking it up with you.
Murphy: You are a miserable little son of a bitch, you know that? I don’t know why she took you in the house…I’d bed you down with the dogs! And I’ll tell you something else, mister, you may be a lot younger and stronger, but you’re about to get your ass kicked from here to the state line…and I’m wearin’ the boots that can do it!
Bobby Jack: You’re a feisty old booger, aren’t ya.
Murphy: I thought we just settled that.

…

Emma [about putting candles on his birthday cake]: How many of these should I put on the cake. Okay, what is it? How old are you, Murphy?
Murphy: Just set the damn thing on fire.

…

Emma [to Jake, after telling him she’s going to ask Bobby Jack to leave]: You sure have had a short childhood.[/b]

Enter Larry and Linus. Conveniently, as it were.

[b]Bobby Jack: God, does everybody have to put their head down and slog?
Emma: Most people do

…

Murphy: He stopped by on his way out of town. He bought some diapers and some baby powder.
Emma: I’m in such a funny mood and I don’t even know where it’s coming from. What will I do with my life, Murphy?
Murphy: Get on with it.
Emma: Should I get rid of the ranch? Should I dye my hair? Put an ad in the single’s column? What? Tell me what?
Murphy: You’re a big girl.
Emma: Give me some advice, Murphy. You know a lot. You’ve lived a long time.
Murphy: You want some advice, write Dear Abby. You got problems, take them to you local minister. Your head isn’t on straight, the mental health clinic is in the phonebook. I’m not a lifeguard, I don’t put up bail and I’m not your dutch uncle.
[he reaches for her, holds her head, then kisses her]
Murphy [nudging her toward the door]: Now, if you don’t know how things are, you’re not as smart as I thought you were.

…

Emma: You think it’s gonna rain.
Murphy: No, it’s usually dry this time of the year.
Emma: Are we talking about the weather?
Murphy: You are.
Emma: That’s not what I want to talk about.
Murphy: Take another tack, Emma.
Emma: I don’t know what tack to take.
Murphy: I’ll help pou. Separate the men from the boys. I show some wear I don’t deny it. But if the fruit hangs on the tree long enough, it gets ripe. I’m durable. I’m steady. And I’m faithful. And I’m in love for the last time in my life.
Emma: I’m in love for the first time in my life.
Murphy: So?
Emma: So…

…

Emma: Stay for supper, Murphy?
Murphy: I won’t do that unless I’m still here at breakfast.
Emma: How do you like your eggs?

…

Murphy: I’m sixty.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Sally Field again. This time as Edna Spalding. Though, like Emma above, she is still trying to scrape by. Only this time on a small farm in the 1930s. And here the center of the universe seems to revolve around making the mortgage payments each month.

In other words, it is not a context that many of us find ourselves in today. Or ever found ourselves in. Still, I am more than familiar with the assumptions you are sometimes required to internalize when you interact with others in a rural or small town environment. In some ways they are just like the rest of us…and in some ways they are not. But no less embedded in dasein. It’s just that back then and there the roles that folks were required to play were more or less carved in stone. Like the Ten Commandments. And, historically, they were smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression.

To say the least, a whole different world in some rather crucial respects. For example, with respect to race relations. And gender roles. And class. But then contingency, chance and change still seem basically to be the same. Like Royce being shot accidently by a drunken Wylie. And Wylie [who is black] then being dragged to his death tied to a rope tied to the back of a truck. And that’s only 5 minutes into the movie.

And then that tornado. The wrath of God perhaps. As if the bank and the ku klux klan weren’t bad enough.

Sally Fields earned herself an Oscar for this one. It was also nominated for the Best Picture that year. And, over at RT, it received a 100% fresh rating on 22 reviews.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_the_Heart
trailer: youtu.be/M3IO5WB0SmM

PLACES IN THE HEART [1984]
Written and directed Robert Benton

Royce [father/sheriff]: Our Heavenly Father, bless this meal and all those who are about to receive it. We are ever thankful of Your generous bounty and Your unceasing love. Please remind us in these hards times that we must be grateful for what we have been given and not to ask for what we cannot have. And make us mindful of those less fortunate than us as we sit at this table with all of thy bounty. Amen.

And he really does seem to mean it. But then, only a few minutes after the amen, he is shot dead as a result of a dumb, stupid accident.

Edna [to Margaret]: What’s gonna happen to us? I can’t support this family. I don’t have the least idea how to go about it. It seems like I have never done anything all my life but raise kids. And take care of the house. Royce paid all the bills. I don’t even know how much salary he made. What’s going to happen to us?

Meanwhile Wylie’s family is busy burying him.

[b]Moze [to Edna]: Ain’t no such thing as a job these days.

…

Albert Denby [the town banker]: Miss Spalding, I just wanted you to know that from all of us down at the First Farmer’s Bank, if there is anything any of us can do you for you in this hour of need, all you have to do is ask.[/b]

Then this:

[b]Denby: Miss Spalding, I don’t know how much your husband told you about his business, but at the close of banking hours yesterday, you had a closing balance of $116.72…however when your husband bought this place, he did borrow money from the bank. At the time of his death, he still owed the bank $3,681…to be paid twice a year. What that means Miss Spalding is that, come October 15th, you owe the bank $241. We were wondering if you had any idea how you were going to make that payment.

…

Denby [suggesting she sell the house to pay the bank back]: Miss Spalding, when trgedies like this happen we sometimes have to face up to things that are really hard. Sometimes it’s necessary to split families up. Now I believe your husband has some family up in Oklahoma. They would probably be glad to take in one of your children.[/b]

In other words, fuck you and your personal problems [none of which were her own fault] as long as we get our money.

[b]Margaret [to Edna]: I swear you are just like Daddy. You’d have thought you were sawing off is leg to ask for the least little thing.

…

Edna [after Moze is caught with her silver by the new sheriff]: You ever try and steal anything from me again, I’ll shoot you myself, you understand?

…

Edna: I was thinking maybe it won’t be necessary to sell my house after all.
Denby: Well of course it’s necessary. I explained all that to you yestday.
Edna: But I was thinking, if I was to plant cotton…
Denby: But you don’t know the first thing about cotton farming.
Edna: Yes, I know but Moze say…
Denby: Who is this Moze…?
Edna: He’s this nigra man…
Denby: I don’t know any nigger around here named Moze.
Edna: Uh, he was just passing through and I gave him a job doing some chores.
Denby: You mean you let some nigger hobo talk you into planting cotton?! Did you ever hear of anything called the Depression.
[he shows her a stack of documents]
Denby: Now, you see these? These are all foreclosures. And that’s just the past three months. These are white men been cotton farming all their lives who couldn’t make a go at it. And you’re listening to some no account nigger.

…

[the cotton needs to be picked right now to make the mortgage payment]
Edna: Frank and Possum can help pick it.
Mr Will: Well, that’s just not going to be nearly enough.
Edna: Then I’ll pick the cotton 24 hours a day myself.
Moze: Miss Spalding, have you ever picked cotton before? After about an hour the bolls pick at your fingers. Then by noon both of your hands are bleeding. And later on your fingers start to swell. Before long you don’t have any feeling in your hands whatsoever. And I ain’t even speaking about what it does to your knees. And I’m not even talking about what it does to your back.

…

Edna [to Moze]: Now you listen to me. If we lose this place then you’re going back to begging for every meal. Mr. Will, they’re gonna put you into a state hospital and I’m gonna lose what’s left of my family. I’m not gonna let that happen. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if it kills me. I don’t care if it kills you. And if the two of you don’t agree then you can both go straight to hell.

…

Edna [after the KKK forces him to “move on”]: Moze.
Moze: Yes, ma’am.
Edna: You took a no-account piece of land and a bunch of people that didn’t know what they were doin’, and you farmed it better than anyone. Colored or white.[/b]

Then the final scene: youtu.be/4uQCyxBL2O8

Preacher: On the night before His crucifixion, Our Lord gathered with His disciples. He broke the bread, and blessed it, saying: “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took the cup and said: “Drink; this is my blood, which I shed for thee.”
Wylie: Peace of God.
Royce: Peace of God.

The congregants are shown passing the elements of communion between them, including Royce, Wylie and Moze – as though they were now all up in Heaven: a true brotherhood on man. No tornadoes. No banks. No KKK. No infidelities. No hard times at all.

I mean, please.

[iambiguous]

Based on a true story. This one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baniszewski

One of those terrrible homegrown crimes that “shocked the nation”. But, in America, you’d think that’s not saying a lot. What could possibly shock us now? But what doesn’t shock us in this day and age could very well have shocked us back in 1965. In fact, nowadays the horrific things that people sometimes do to each other “ouside the law” may well be consumed by some as just more entertainment.

But, back then, having just emerged from a more or less collective Leave It To Beaver frame of mind, something like this [for many] was all but unimaginable. Thus, some might argue that we have, uh, progressed since then. Meaning we have become considerably more sophisticated in situating such human behavior in a post-modern world. Some simply don’t have the psychological constraints here and now that were far more predominant in those days.

And, let’s face it, when it comes to the families we are “born into”, some get luckier than others. But then the farther down the families are on the economic scale, the less that luck might have anything to do with it at all. In the belly of the working class beast, some moms and dads are struggling just to survive from day and day. So, sometimes they take it out on the kids. It then depends, more often then not, on how bad your own life happens to be. Fortunately, few of us get this unlucky.

And [it all but goes without saying] God and religion are everywhere here. It’s only a question then of the extent to which pathology is also a factor.

IMDb

[b]The real life daughter, Paula Baniszewski, was released from prison and changed her name. She ended up getting a job as a guidance counselor aide in an Iowa school and worked there for 14 years before anyone found out about her real past. She was immediately fired.

Ellen Page literally starved herself for her role as Sylvia. When director Tommy O’Haver noticed she was looking thinner, he asked her if she was eating and she replied “No, because Sylvia wasn’t being fed.”

The film was shot in chronological order to give the actors the experience of what Sylvia really went through.

The film is based largely on actual court transcripts from the case.

Most of the cast were completely unaware of the real Likens murder until after they read the script.

Released the same year as The Girl Next Door (2007), which was based on a novel inspired by the Sylvia Likens murder.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0802948/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Crime
trailer: youtu.be/TyI7w0mPBP0

AN AMERICAN CRIME [2007]
Written in part and directed by Tommy O’Haver

[b]Sylvia [voiceover]: My favorite ride was the merry-go-round. Maybe I was a little old for it, but all those other rides they scared me. The merry-go-round just goes round and round, and up and down. It don’t go anywhere, but I always felt save.

…

Gertrude [the mother]: Marie! I need you to feed little Kenny. If I don’t get this ironing to Mrs. Duke by four, I wont get a tip.
Marie: We’re all out of milk.
Gertrude: Well, then get some.
Marie: They wont give us no more credit at the store.
Gertrude: They will, if you take the baby.

…

Gertrude [to her children]: I want you all, upstairs!
[motioning to Sylvia and her sister Jennie]:
Gertrude: Except for you two! I want you down in the basement!

…

[down in the basement]
Gertrude: Your daddy’s’ check didn’t arrive today.
Oh, it’s probably just late. I know my Mama, she wouldn’t let him forget.
Gertrude: You know what I think? I just took care of you two, for two weeks… for nothing. I think your mama and daddy left you here for good.
[she then commense to take the strap to Sylvia]

…

Gertrude: Who’s in charge here?
Johnny: You are, mama.

…

Jennie: Are you awake? You’re okay?
Sylvia: Did you say your prayers yet? How about mamas favorite psalm? “Turn on to me, and be gracious to me, dear lord. for I am lonely and afficted. Release the troubles of my heart and bring me out of my distresses! Consider how many are my foes, and with what violence they hate me. Huard my life and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame for I take refuge in Thee. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for Thee.”[/b]

What else is there? Only the horrors have but barely begun. First up: the cigarette burns. Then the coke bottle.

[b]Prosecutor: Patty, then what did Mrs. Baniszewski do?
Patty: She handed her a bottle…and told her to pull up her skirt.
Prsecutor: And then?
Patty: And then, she said to put it up her.
Prosecutor: Did Sylvia say anything, when Mrs. Baniszewski asked her to do this?
Patty: All she said was…I can’t.
Prosecutor: What did Mrs. Baniszewski say?
Patty: She said…“Come on, you can do better than that!”
Prosecutor: And what did Sylvia do?
Patty: What Gertie told her to.

…

Neighbor [hearing Sylvia scream in agony]: It’s best to stay out of it, I guess.

…

Jennie: Sylvia. Sylvia. I’m sorry, Sylvia. But, I’m too scared. I’ve tried talking, with Gertie, but… She…she said, you can have your bible.
Marie: Jennie. Mama wants you upstairs. Family-meeting.
Jennie [to Sylvia]: I’ll do what I can.
Marie: She said now.

…

Sally: What’d she do?
Paula: She was real bad. She’s dirty. Mama said, she was a slut.
[Johnny kicks her]
Sally: Johnny!
Johnny [showing her all the bruises]: Don’t worry about it. She’s used to it. Watch this!
[he burns her with a lit cigarette]
Johnny: Neat, huh?
Sally: You just burn her like that?
Johnny: Yeah, you can too.
Sally: I don’t want to.
Johny: What? You’re chicken?
Marie: It’s OK. Mama, said you can.
[so she does]

…

Prosecutor: Did you see Sally, take cigarettes, and actually burn Sylvia with them?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Prosecutor: How many times?
Elizabeth: She would do it, every time she came over.
Prosecutor: How many times did that happened?
Elizabeth: Every day. [/b]

It’s just fucking unbelievable. The neighborhood kids were invited over after school to torture her. And then when the prosecutor asked them why they did it they all said, “I don’t know, Sir”.

[b]Prosecutor: Shirley, was your mother ever present while some of the other people were doing these things, to Sylvia?
Shirley: Yes, she was.
Prosecutor: How many times?
Shirley: She was there, just about all the time.
Prosecutor: And what did she say when people were doing these things, to Sylvia?
Shirley: Nothing.

…

Shirley: I thought we were just teaching her.

…

Gertrude [to a barely conscious Sylvia]: You know what it’s like to be sick, Sylvia. I’ve been sick for so long, too. I can’t discipline my kids they was I should. I punish them I know, but… sometimes with my medicine I gets so I don’t know what I’m doing. And I care for them so much. Paula, the thing is…Paula’s a lot like me. I had her when I was just about your age. Then Stephanie. Then all the others. Then John left…And here I am on medicine, doing whatever I can to keep my family together. I want something better for Paula…There has to be something better… And I need to protect my children…
[she starts to cry]
Gertrude: Do you understand that? You kids you’re all I’ve got. Thank you, Sylvia. Thank you for understanding, thank you.

…

Gertrude [preparing to tattoo Sylvia’s belly]: Ricky… she came back from juvenile! Started stirring up trouble again… Johnny hold her!
Sylvia: No, please, please!
Gertrude: Keep her still!
Marie: If you move, it’ll only be messy.
Gertrude [gives Marie a lighter and a safety pin]: Light that.
Sylvia: No! No! No! Please! No! No! Please! Please!
Gertrude: Stop it!
Shirley: You got it right, mama?
Gertrude: Make sure it’s hot!
Sylvia: I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
Gertrude: You liar!
Sylvia: Please stop, please no! Please!
[Marie gives Gertrude the safety pin]
Gertrude: You branded my daughters…now I have to brand you

…

Cop: What’s the problem?
Jennie: Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.[/b]

Now she tells the cops:

[b]Prosecutor: Jennie, did you ever see Sylvia do anything, to Mrs. Baniszewski?
Jennie: No. I didn’t see anything.
Prosecutor: Did you ever see her do anything, to Paula?
Jennie: No.
Prosecutor: Did you ever see her do anything, to Johnny Baniszewski?
Jennie: No.
Prosecutor: Jennie, you saw your sister being hit, beaten, struck. Why did you not call the police?
Jennie: Well, uh, Gertie threatened me, that if I told anybody I’d get the same treatment that Sylvia was getting.
Prosecutor: You could have told anyone, up and down on that street.
Jennie: I was scared, and I guess, I just…I just did what she told me to do. I wish, I hadn’t.

…

Sylvia [voiceover – as though from the grave]: She sacrificed me to protect her children, and she sacrificed her children to protect herself.

…

Sylvia [voiceover]: The case got a lot of attention. It even made Time Magazine. At least people started talking about things, they used to ignore. The others, were tried later. Paula was found guilty as an accomplice and served a couple of years. She had that Baby, and named it, Gertrude. Johnny was convicted too. He was the youngest inmate in the history, of the Indiana State Reformatory. He would later become a lay Minister. A way of telling his story story, I guess. Ricky Hobbs, was found guilty of man-slaughter and he served time at the reformatory. He died at age 21, of lung cancer. Coy, also served a couple of years. He went on with a life of crime and was in and out of prison. I don’t know what happened to any of the rest of them. Mom und Dad, went back on the road and left Jennie with the District Attorney and his Family. They helped her get back on her feet. Gertrude served 20 years of her life sentence. She was released on parole in 1985. Before she died, 5 years later. she took responsibility, for everything that had happened.

…

Sylvia [voiceover]: Reverend Bill, used to say: “For every situation, God always has a plan”. I guess, I’m still trying to figure out, what that plan was. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Based on a true story. This one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baniszewski

One of those terrrible homegrown crimes that “shocked the nation”. But, in America, you’d think that’s not saying a lot. What could possibly shock us now? But what doesn’t shock us in this day and age could very well have shocked us back in 1965. In fact, nowadays the horrific things that people sometimes do to each other “ouside the law” may well be consumed by some as just more entertainment.

But, back then, having just emerged from a more or less collective Leave It To Beaver frame of mind, something like this [for many] was all but unimaginable. Thus, some might argue that we have, uh, progressed since then. Meaning we have become considerably more sophisticated in situating such human behavior in a post-modern world. Some simply don’t have the psychological constraints here and now that were far more predominant in those days.

And, let’s face it, when it comes to the families we are “born into”, some get luckier than others. But then the farther down the families are on the economic scale, the less that luck might have anything to do with it at all. Moms and dads are struggling to survive from day and day and sometimes they take it out on the kids. Instead, then, more often then not, it just depends on how bad yours happens to be. Fortunately, few of us get this unlucky.

And [it all but goes without saying] God and religion are everywhere here. It’s only a question then of the extent to which pathology is also a factor.

IMDb

[b]The real life daughter, Paula Baniszewski, was released from prison and changed her name. She ended up getting a job as a guidance counselor aide in an Iowa school and worked there for 14 years before anyone found out about her real past. She was immediately fired.

Ellen Page literally starved herself for her role as Sylvia. When director Tommy O’Haver noticed she was looking thinner, he asked her if she was eating and she replied “No, because Sylvia wasn’t being fed.”

The film was shot in chronological order to give the actors the experience of what Sylvia really went through.

The film is based largely on actual court transcripts from the case.

Most of the cast were completely unaware of the real Likens murder until after they read the script.

Released the same year as The Girl Next Door (2007), which was based on a novel inspired by the Sylvia Likens murder.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0802948/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Crime
trailer: youtu.be/TyI7w0mPBP0

AN AMERICAN CRIME [2007]
Written in part and directed by Tommy O’Haver

[b]Sylvia [voiceover]: My favorite ride was the merry-go-round. Maybe I was a little old for it, but all those other rides they scared me. The merry-go-round just goes round and round, and up and down. It don’t go anywhere, but I always felt save.

…

Gertrude [the mother]: Marie! I need you to feed little Kenny. If I don’t get this ironing to Mrs. Duke by four, I wont get a tip.
Marie: We’re all out of milk.
Gertrude: Well, then get some.
Marie: They wont give us no more credit at the store.
Gertrude: They will, if you take the baby.

…

Gertrude [to her children]: I want you all, upstairs!
[motioning to Sylvia and her sister Jennie]:
Gertrude: Except for you two! I want you down in the basement!

…

[down in the basement]
Gertrude: Your daddy’s’ check didn’t arrive today.
Oh, it’s probably just late. I know my Mama, she wouldn’t let him forget.
Gertrude: You know what I think? I just took care of you two, for two weeks… for nothing. I think your mama and daddy left you here for good.
[she then commense to take the strap to Sylvia]

…

Gertrude: Who’s in charge here?
Johnny: You are, mama.

…

Jennie: Are you awake? You’re okay?
Sylvia: Did you say your prayers yet? How about mamas favorite psalm? Turn on to me, and be gracious to me, dear lord. for I am lonely and afficted. Release the troubles of my heart and bring me out of my distresses! Consider how many are my foes, and with what violence they hate me. Huard my life and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame for I take refuge in Thee. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for Thee.[/b]

What else is there? Only the horrors have but barely begun. First up: the cigarette burns. Then the coke bottle.

[b]Prosecutor: Patty, then what did Mrs. Baniszewski do?
Patty: She handed her a bottle…and told her to pull up her skirt.
Prsecutor: And then?
Patty: And then, she said to put it up her.
Prosecutor: Did Sylvia say anything, when Mrs. Baniszewski asked her to do this?
Patty: All she said was…I can’t.
Prosecutor: What did Mrs. Baniszewski say?
Patty: She said…“Come on, you can do better than that!”
Prosecutor: And what did Sylvia do?
Patty: What Gertie told her to.

…

Neighbor [hearing Sylvia scream in agony]: It’s best to stay out of it, I guess.

…

Jennie: Sylvia. Sylvia. I’m sorry, Sylvia. But, I’m too scared. I’ve tried talking, with Gertie, but… She…she said, you can have your bible.
Marie :Jennie. Mama wants you upstairs. Family-meeting.
Jennie [to Sylvia]: I’ll do what I can.
Marie: She said now.

…

Sally: What’d she do?
Paula: She was real bad. She’s dirty. Mama said, she was a slut.
[Johnny kicks her]
Sally: Johnny!
Johnny [showing her all the bruises]: Don’t worry about it. She’s used to it. Watch this!
[he burns her with sa lit cigarette]
Johnny: Neat, huh?
Sally: You just burn her like that?
Johnny: Yeah, you can too.
Sally: I don’t want to.
Johny: What? You’re chicken?
Marie: It’s OK. Mama, said you can.
[so she does]

…

Prosecutor: Did you see Sally, take cigarettes, and actually burn Sylvia with them?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Prosecutor: How many times?
Elizabeth: She would do it, every time she came over.
Prosecutor: How many times did that happened?
Elizabeth: Every day. [/b]

It’s just fucking unbelievable. The neighborhood kids were invited over after school to torture her. And then when the prosecutor asked them why they did it they all said, “I don’t know, Sir”.

[b]Prosecutor: Shirley, was your mother ever present while some of the other people were doing these things, to Sylvia?
Shirley: Yes, she was.
Prosecutor: How many times?
Shirley: She was there, just about all the time.
Prosecutor: And what did she say when people were doing these things, to Sylvia?
Shirley: Nothing.

…

Shirley: I thought we were just teaching her.

…

Gertrude [to a barely conscious Sylvia]: You know what it’s like to be sick, Sylvia. I’ve been sick for so long, too. I can’t discipline my kids they was I should. I punish them I know, but… sometimes with my medicine I gets so I don’t know what I’m doing. And I care for them so much. Paula, the thing is…Paula’s a lot like me. I had her when I was just about your age. Then Stephanie. Then all the others. Then John left…And here I am on medicine, doing whatever I can to keep my family together. I want something better for Paula…There has to be something better… And I need to protect my children…
[she starts to cry]
Gertrude: Do you understand that? You kids you’re all I’ve got. Thank you, Sylvia. Thank you for understanding, thank you.

…

Gertrude [preparing to tattoo Sylvia’s belly]: Ricky… she came back from juvenile! Started stirring up trouble again… Johnny hold her!
Sylvia: No, please, please!
Gertrude: Keep her still!
Marie: If you move, it’ll only be messy.
Gertrude [gives Marie a lighter and a safety pin]: Light that.
Sylvia: No! No! No! Please! No! No! Please! Please!
Gertrude: Stop it!
Shirley: You got it right, mama?
Gertrude: Make sure it’s hot!
Sylvia: I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
Gertrude: You liar!
Sylvia: Please stop, please no! Please!
[Marie gives Gertrude the safety pin]
Gertrude: You branded my daughters…now I have to brand you

…

Cop: What’s the problem?
Jennie: Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.[/b]

Now she tells the cops:

[b]Prosecutor: Jennie, did you ever see Sylvia do anything, to Mrs. Baniszewski?
Jennie: No. I didn’t see anything.
Prosecutor: Did you ever see her do anything, to Paula?
Jennie: No.
Prosecutor: Did you ever see her do anything, to Johnny Baniszewski?
Jennie: No.
Prosecutor: Jennie, you saw your sister being hit, beaten, struck. Why did you not call the police?
Jennie: Well, uh, Gertie threatened me, that if I told anybody I’d get the same treatment that Sylvia was getting.
Prosecutor: You could have told anyone, up and down on that street.
Jennie: I was scared, and I guess, I just…I just did what she told me to do. I wish, I hadn’t.

…

Sylvia [voiceover – as though from the grave]: She sacrificed me to protect her children, and she sacrificed her children to protect herself.
Sylvia [voiceover]: The case got a lot of attention. It even made Time Magazine. At least people started talking about things, they used to ignore. The others, were tried later. Paula was found guilty as an accomplice and served a couple of years. She had that Baby, and named it, Gertrude. Johnny was convicted too. He was the youngest inmate in the history, of the Indiana State Reformatory. He would later become a lay Minister. A way of telling his story story, I guess. Ricky Hobbs, was found guilty of man-slaughter and he served time at the reformatory. He died at age 21, of lung cancer. Coy, also served a couple of years. He went on with a life of crime and was in and out of prison. I don’t know what happened to any of the rest of them. Mom und Dad, went back on the road and left Jennie with the District Attorney and his Family. They helped her get back on her feet. Gertrude served 20 years of her life sentence. She was released on parole in 1985. Before she died, 5 years later. she took responsibility, for everything that had happened.

…

Sylvia [voiceover]: Reverend Bill, used to say: “For every situation, God always has a plan”. I guess, I’m still trying to figure out, what that plan was. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Roller derby. It’s not for everyone: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby

And, inevitably, comes this question: Is it real? Or, instead, is it just another submental contraption like the WWE? Well, it seems to be: blog.timesunion.com/rollerderby/ … real/3613/

On the other hand, Bliss Cavendar will do just about anything to escape the hellole life that her mom has planned for her down in Bodeen, Texas. And Austin is, after all, about as far off the beaten path as one can go in the Lone Star State. Or so I’ve heard.

Roller derby is basically for grrls. Real badasses in other word. Think Joan Jett on skates. Or Sheena the punk rocker.

For all intents and purposes though, they become men. They use names like Maggie Mayhem, Eva Destruction, Bloody Holly, Malice in Wonderland, Dinah Might, Jaba the Slut. And so it goes without saying that Bliss will have to be reborn. It’s a contact sport and she needs to start making contact. And that means being ruthless. So she calls herself Babe Ruthless.

I’m trying to imagine some of the feminists I have known over the years reacting to this.

Bottom line: Somehow it really is possible to reconcile the Blue Bonnet Beauty Pageant with roller derby. Or Drew Barrymore can. But it’s all just basically more WWE crap to me. Only with so much more…heart?

IMDb

An important rule of derby depicted but not explained in the film: the first jammer to exit the pack cleanly is declared the lead jammer and can call off the jam at any time by putting her hands to her hips, returning everyone to their starting points and beginning a new jam. Jammers are seen throughout the film “calling off the jam” with an energetic hip touching gesture.

Good to know.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_It_(film
trailer: youtu.be/RQGPdXnb2Gg

WHIP IT [2009]
Directed by Drew Barrymore

Beauty pageant emcee: Now, Miss Amber Black.
Amber: If I could have dinner with anyone, it would have to be God. Because what they say is true. God is great.

Then Bliss [with her hair dyed navy blue] takes the stage:

Bliss: If I could have dinner with anyone, it would be Amelia Earhart, because not only was she a pioneer of aviation, but she was a great woman in history.

In Bodeen, apparently, that is a shocking thing to say. At a beauty pageant especially.

[b]Corbi: So, what are you, like, alternative now?
Bliss: Alternative to what?

…

Colby: What’s the name of that thing that if I eat it real fast, it’s free?
Bliss: That’s the Squealer. You have to eat it in three minutes or less.
Colby: Yeah, you bring me a Squealer.[/b]

The fucking thing is huge.

[b]Colby: It’s free, bitches, it’s free! IT’S FREE!!.

…

Pash: You don’t have the balls to try out.
Bliss: I can grow the balls.

…

Razor [coach]: All right, listen up, fresh meat. There’s a lot more to derby than fishnets and picking out a tough name. This is a sport. Now, the league has six spots open. So whatever shred of talent you have, hope you leave it out on the track for me today.
Bliss: Just what are the rules?
Razor: Derby 101, people. Four blockers from each team are lined up on the track. Ten feet behind them, two jammers are lined up, one from each team.
Girl: We’re the ones who score.
Razor: First whistle blows and the pack takes off. Then a second whistle blows and the jammers take off. Once the jammer breaks through the pack, she hauls ass around the track a second time and tries to score. For every player on the opposing team the jammer passes, she gets a point. Most points wins the game every single time.

…

Earl [to Bliss]: I like smart girls. That’s why I married your mama. Well, that and I knocked her up.

…

Maggie [to Bliss]: Have you ever had crabs?

…

Bliss [before her first game]: Has anyone ever thrown up on the track before?

…

The team: We’re number two! We’re number two! We’re number two! We’re number two!
Razor: You guys came in second…out of two teams.

…

Bliss: Oh, my God, it’s him. What do I do?
Pash: Go ask him if he wants a Squealer.

…

Mom: What do you think that the world thinks of those girls with aIl their tattoos? Do you think they have an easy time finding a job? Or getting a loan application? Or going to a decent college? Or finding a husband? No, you just limit your choices.
Bliss: Seriously, you need to stop. You really need to stop shoving your psychotic idea of '50s womanhood down my throat. And pageants? I mean, what have they ever done for you?
Mom: That’s my point, Bliss. I didn’t have a mother to navigate all my opportunities.
Bliss: Jesus Christ. I am in love with this. l mean. don’t you get it?
Mom: It won’t last. In two or three years, it’ll be over. This is a moment.
Bliss: Well, how great is that?
Mom: You don’t understand. You will when you have to support yourself.
Bliss: l do support myself.
Mom: No, you don’t. You buy shoes.
[long pause as they stare each other down]
Bliss: You know, you’re full of shit.[/b]

Is she? Why can’t these things always just be cut and dry…

[b]Pash: You know what? I’m ecstatic that you have this whole new life and you have all new friends and it’s great. But I’m trying to get out of this armpit of a town just as much as you. And last time I checked, getting arrested is not the kind of extracurricular that Ivy League schools are looking for. Do you really think that this roller derby career of yours is going anywhere?
Bliss: That’s not what it’s about.
Pash: Oh, yeah, right.

…

Pash [to Oliver]: If, you know, you hear a hint of pain in my voice when I say that I’ve lost my best friend to a gang of roller skating she-males and that the only highlight of my night was serving corn to an old man who can’t even chew it, then I’d say you’re wrong. I’m happy.

…

Maggie: I’ve just been thinking. I think maybe you’re being a little selfish with your mom.
Bliss: Okay, no. She’s the one who has been shoving her agenda down my throat since day one.
Maggie: First of all, you’re lucky to have a mom that even cares. And just because she’s wrong about derby, doesn’t mean she’s wrong about every single thing. I am here for you, but just because you’ve found a new family doesn’t mean you throw the old one away.[/b]

On the other hand, that’s what I did. Just not at 17.

Maggie [to Bliss]: Ma’am, put down that lip gloss and step away from the mirror!