philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

Love and lust. From the perspective of, say, a nymphomaniac. A nymphomaniac named Joe.

When it comes to relationships, some settle for lust, while others absolutely insist that love have something to do with it. Of course for all practical purposes there must be millions and millions of versions of either one. With millions and millions more to come. On the other hand, what do I know about being a nymphomaniac? Though I have met a couple. None like Joe though.

Let’s face it, a child’s first experience with sexuality can sometimes have a profound effect on her life. It might be a fulfulling, even exhilarating experience; or it might be traumatic, even horrific.

Joe’s experience on the other hand could not possibly have been more mechanical. She may just as well have gone fishing.

In fact, this being a Lars von Trier film, there are going to be surreal, nonlinear elements interspersed throughout it. Like Joe detailing her near pornographic sex life to Seligman and Seligman reacting to it by making allusions to [among other things] fly fishing. The way in which he is only able to understand her by groping somehow to fit what she tells him into his own world. Which she herself has little or not understanding of. And with sex and love this becomes all the more problematic given the distance [measured existentially] between them. And of course your own reaction to them will in turn be measured entirely from an existential vantage point.

We might just as well leave it all up to the roll of a die. As young Joe does.

And then interspersed between their conversations [and the sex] are segments that seem devoted to suggesting that so much of what we do [on the job for example] is quite superficial and superfluous. Even absurd when delving into the function of, say, a cake fork:

Segilman: You must admit that a cake fork is a practical tool. It’s like a cross between a knife and fork. The point is that you’re supposed to be able to hold the cake dish with one hand and then cut the cake with the other. And then eat it with a fork. If not feminine, it’s at least bourgeois.

Then it all becomes interwined in numbers and math and music and [of course] death.

Ultimately it is about how we either do or do not make contact with others. And the extent to which we can close the gaps in discussing it. Or only succeed in making them all the wider. But then in turn, ultimately, this can only be my own reaction.

And it goes without saying that a film such as this will spark some controversy: indiewire.com/article/how-la … ersial-hit

IMDb

[b]Shia LaBeouf was asked to send pictures of his penis in order to obtain his role. He subsequently decided to send in personal sex tapes of him and his girlfriend having sex in order to convince Lars von Trier to cast him.

While the film features unsimulated sex, exposed genitals and penetration were digital compositions of pornographic actors onto the bodies of the film’s actors.

A prosthetic penis was used for the blow job scene on the train.

According to Stellan Skarsgård, the “chocolate sweets” portion of the first chapter is based on an anecdote told by a female friend of Lars von Trier about how she and a friend dared each other to have sex with people on a train for a bag of candy.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013) is the second film featuring Uma Thurman to be cut into two films due to length issues. The first was Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004). [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphomaniac_(film
trailer: youtu.be/AO0lTueqXT0

NYMPHOMANIAC [VOLUME I] 2013
Written and directed by Lars von Trier

[b]Joe: I do not need an ambulance.
Seligman: Clearly you need one. I’m calling one.
Joe: In this case, I’ll be gone before you get back.
Seligman: That’s gonna hurt.
Joe: It is possible, but it does not matter to me.
Seligman: I assume you do not want me to call the police too.
Joe: Yes, exactly
Seligman: Do you want something?
Joe: I would like a cup of tea with milk.
Seligman: Well, you have to come with me. I do not serve tea in the street.

…

Joe: Maybe I now know where to start. But you understand I’ll have to tell the whole stor. And it will be long.
Seligman: Long is good.
Joe: And moral, I’m afraid.

…

Joe: When I was very young, I was mechanically inclined. Kinetic energy, for example, has always fascinated me. And my friend, let’s call her B, was always inventing something new. Playing frogs was one of B’s classics.

…

Seligman: Why do you say that children are sinful?
Joe: Children are not. I am.
Seligman: I see no sin anywhere. But I’m not religious.
Joe: This is because you do not know the rest of the story. Speaking of which, I’m not religious.
Seligman: Why do you take the worst aspect of religion…the concept of sin…and let it survive beyond religion? I do not understand this self-hatred.
Joe: Well, that’s what I said. You would not understand.

…

Young Joe: If I asked you to take my virginity, would that be a problem?
Jerôme: No, I don’t see a problem.

…

Joe: I never forgot those two humiliating numbers.
Seligman: Three-five? Those are Fibonacci numbers…

…

Joe: The train trip increased my appetite, and soon B and I and started a club called “Little Flock”.
[a group of young girls are chanting]
Girls: Mea vulva, mea maxima vulva.
Joe: B, of course, was the leader, since she was the most daring. She was raised Catholic. I know you must know the practices of the Catholic Church.
The girls: Mea vulva, mea vulva, mea maxima vulva.
Seligman: Interesting. Blasphemous, satanic music. The interval between B and F is a tritone. The range of the devil. The music was banned in the middle ages.

…

Joe: The club was about fucking…about having the right to be horny. We masturbated together, that sort of thing. But it was rebellious. We could not have boyfriends. No fucking the same guy more than once.
Seligman: What did you rebel against?
Joe: Love.
Seligman: Love?
Joe: We pledged to combat the love-fixated society.

…

B [to Joe about her relationship with Alex]: The secret ingredient to sex is love.
Joe [relating this to Seligman]: For me, love was just lust with jealousy added. Everything else was just total nonesense. For every hundred crimes committed in the name of love, only one is committed in the name of sex.

…

Seligman [after Joe relates her new feelings for Jerome]: Love is blind.
Joe: No, no, no, it’s worse. Love distort things. Or even worse, love is something you’ve never asked for. The erotic is something that I did ask for…or even demanded of men. But this idiotic love…I felt humiliated by it. And all the dishonesty that follows. The erotic is about saying yes. Love appeals to the lowest instincts, wrapped up in lies. How do you say yes when you mean no and vice versa? I was ashamed of what I became but it was beyond my control.[/b]

Got that? Of course, nobody ever really gets it right because it is one of those things where nobody ever can.

[b]Joe’s father: It’s actually the souls of the trees we’re seeing in the winter. In summer everything is green and idyllic but in the winter, the branches and the trunks all stand out. Just look at how crooked they all are. The branches have to carry all the leaves to the sunlight. That’s one long struggle for survival.

…

Mrs. H [to Young Joe]: Would it be alright if I show the children the whoring bed? After all, they also have a stake in this event.

…

Mrs. H [to her children, referring to Joe’s bedroom]: Let’s go see daddy’s favorite place!

…

Seligman [after Joe relates her fantastical experience with Mr. and Mrs. H]: So how did this episode affect your life.
Joe: Not at all.
Seligman [nonplussed]: Not at all?
Joe: No. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Seligman: Oh, yes, that’s true. Some blame the addict. Others feel sorry for him.
Joe: But I was an addict out of lust, not out of need.
Seligman [chuckling]: You would say that, wouldn’t you?
Joe: And lust had led to all of the destruction around me. Anywhere I went.

…

Joe: What are you reading?
Seligman: I’m not reading really. Im just reacquainting myself with Edgar Allen Poe.
Joe: I don’t know him.
Seligman: Well, he was avery anxiety-ridden man
[long pause]
Seligman: He died in the most fearful way you can imagine, in something called delirium tremens. It occurs when the long time abuse of alcohol is followed by a sudden abstinence. And your body goes into some kind of hypersensitive shock. You can see the most horrifying hallucinations…like rats and snakes and cockroaches just coming out of the floors and worms slithering in the walls. One’s entire nervous system is on high alert and you have a constant panic and paranoia…and then the circulatory system fails. But the panic and horror remains until the moment you die.

…

Seligman [narrating Poe]: During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

…

Young Joe: How can you not be afraid?
Father [who was a doctor]: I have seen many die. Then there’s that quote from Epicurus about not fearing death. “When we are, death has not come. When death has come, we are not.”[/b]

In theory, as it were.

Joe [to Jerome]: Fill up all of my holes.

[iambiguous]

More love and lust. More love and human remains. Only this time it played out on the world stage. Or, at the very least, in the public domain that was England circa 1963.

In other words, this is a “fictionalized” account of the infamous ‘Profuma Affair’: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair

Sex and politics and scandal. There is simply no end to all of the possible permutations. And here it is especially “juicy” given the manner in which the ruling class [in England no less!] tends to be especially uptight when it comes to the exchange of bodily fluids. It’s not for nothing that the main fixture in this ignominious cause célèbre, in being a member of the Conservative Party, makes the scandal all the juicier still.

And this was back in the late 50s and early 60s. Among other things, gender roles were still rather, well, primitive. By, say, today’s standards?

Still, in one respect, not much has really changed at all: rich old men want beautiful young women. Ah, but then love can sometimes begin to creep into it. And that’s when male possessiveness can begin to rear its ugly head. On the other hand, even then it only rarely makes for really big and really bold headlines.

And then there is the relationship between Christine and Stephen. See if you can figure it out. But the bottom line is that Christine is very beautiful and almost every man who sees her wants her. Then she becomes entangled in mutilple relationships. On and off the clock. And then it is only a matter of time before the complications become unmanagable. A gun is discharged, the cops [and the tabloids] come and everything just starts to unravel.

And once these things take off they tend to take on a life all their own. You think you can control it [at first] but then, as with all the rest of them, you find that you can’t. Then it’s every man for himself. Or every woman.

IMDb

[b]Many UK actors are said to have refused roles in this movie because of the subject could cost them knighthoods and the other honours. However, Ian McKellen (John Profumo) was knighted in 1991, two years after the film was made.

This film narrowly escaped an X rating in the U.S. because of some questionable footage during the Cliveden House orgy sequence. Under closer scrutiny it was determined that a couple of extras were engaged in actual copulation on a piano in one of the background scenes. Even though they were not captured in sharp focus, the scene had to be trimmed for all general releases to avoid the restrictive rating, which BBFC censor James Ferman accomplished by defusing the light from a table-lamp in the foreground. The inquisitive-minded will find this sequence at approximately 49 minutes and 5 seconds into the movie.[/b]

Once again: un-fucking-believable!

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal_(1989_film
trailer: youtu.be/7MRsq_iApng

SCANDAL [1989]
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones

[b]Stephen [to Christine]: When I see beauty like yours…wild, untutored, elemental beauty…I long to liberate it. I could do wonders with you, little baby, I could shock the world.

…

Christine: You make it sound like a dare.
Stephen: You should never say no to a dare, Christine, you never know what you might miss.

…

Stephen: Nothing to be afraid of. We’re all flesh. No harm in it as long as no one gets hurt. The trouble with this world is that everyone is afraid to enjoy themsleves…or are too ashamed to admit it.
Christine: You’re the doctor.

…

Mandy: Nicky’s on the game. She’s a prostitute.
Christine: So? There’s no harm in it. We’re all flesh you know.

…

Stephen: That’s all?
Christine: That’s all.
Stephen: He didn’t touch you?
Christine: He was shy.
Stephen: Shy. What’s wrong with the man.
Christine: He wanted to talk. You know, chat.
Stephen: I saw him that evening. We all did. He was all over you like a cheap suit.
Christine: Honestly, Stephen, what did you expect? Did you think he was going to rip my knickers off in the back of the Rolls.
Stephen: I expect too much. That’s the trouble.
Christine: Don’t worry. He’ll ring again.

…

John: I must dash.
Christine: You’re always in such a rush.
John: I have an army to run. You do want to be saved from the approaching Russians hordes don’t you?

…

Stephen [to Christine at an orgy]: Diana could teach you a thing or two. She had a fling with JFK.

…

John: We can’t go on like this. You living here, ducking and diving. You must let me get you a place of your own.
Christine: I told you, I am happy just the way I am.
John: I can’t go on seeing you while you are living here with Stephen.
Christine: Don’t be silly. He is not my boyfriend, you know that. I don’t know why you don’t like him.
John [becoming angry]: He can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s vain, shallow and empty-headed. We must get you out of his clutches.
Christine: He doesn’t clutch.
John: I’m serious, Christine. We can’t go on seeing each other while you are living with him.
[long pause as Christine contemplates it]
Christine [calling his bluff]: That’s it then.
John [now in a panic]: Now, darling, listen. People do talk. People do listen. I have to be careful…
Christine: Well, be careful then. Do what you like. But I am not leaving Stephen for anyone. And I don’t care if you are the Prime Minister someday.

…

Landady [to Stephen on the phone]: Oh, Dr. Ward, I just thought you should know there’s a black man shooting at your door.[/b]

Indeed, one of the Fine Young Cannibals.

Stephen: That’s enough, Christine. I say no, no more. The Express was there, the Daily Mail, the Mirror. I’m a doctor. I can’t have it. I’ve got patients, I’ve got a certain position, I’ve got a reputation. I can’t have love sick jungle-bunnies at my front door taking pot-shots at the windows. It’s montrous!
Christine: You took me down there. It was you who wanted to go sneaking around there at one in the morning looking for drugs. I never wanted to go. You made me. I’d never have met Lucky or Johnnie if it wasn’t for you. It was all your idea.
Stephen: You go too far.
Christine: Be a devil, you said. Never say no to a dare, you said. I’m yours, Stephen. You pull the strings. I’m what you made me.

But [of course] that was only so long as his own interests weren’t at stake.

Stephen [to Christine]: It’s over, little baby. It’s over.

Big mistake. Enter the reporter. Well, if you want to call someone who writes for the tabloids a reporter. Not only that but he is willing to buy her story.

[b]Kevin [the reporter]: You got your rainboots on?
Editor: Why?
Kevin: Because this shit’s deep. That story? Gunshots at home of society doctor. It’s going to make some people very very nervous.
Editor: Yeah?
Kevin: And listen, that’s not the half of it. If what this tart has just told me is true, then we are sitting on dynamite. Let me give you the headline: THE WAR MINISTER AND THE LOVER AND THE RUSSIAN SPY.

…

John [to Stephen and Bill]: She must be stopped. She is talking to everybody!
Stephen: Leave Christine to me, John. I dreamt her up, I can make her vanish.

…

John: There was a note.
Stephen: I know. I’ll see if I can get it back.
John: Oh, it was nothing. I have nothing to hide.
Stephen: Come off it, John, we all have something to hide, what a boring life it would be if we didn’t.

…

Stephen [to Eugene]: This will all blow over. They always do. By this time next week, they’ll all be talking about something else.[/b]

Nope. Enter Scotland Yard.

[b]Mom: Christine, what have you done?
Christine: It’s not me, Mom. It’s everyone else.

…

Lawyer [in court]: Are you aware that Lord Astor has denied impropriety in his relationship with you?
Mandy [smiling]: Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
[crowd in gallery roars with laughter]

…

Stephen [from his suicide note]: It’s really more than I can stand. The horror day after day in the court and in the street. It’s not only for you, it’s the wish not to let them get me. I’d rather get myself. I do hope I haven’t let people down too much…but I have given up all hope. I’m sorry to disappoint the vultures. I only hope this has done the job.[/b]

Here’s one argument that Stephen Ward was the “fall guy” in the scandal: telegraph.co.uk/history/1006 … ofumo.html

[b]Title card: Stephen Ward was found guilty in his absense of living off the immoral earnings of prostitution. He died without gaining consciousness and was cremated at Mortlake on August 10th 1963. Nobody came.

Title card: Christine Keeler was accused of perjury in the Lucky Gordon assault trial. She entered Holloway pridson on December 6th 1963.

John Profuma left politics and worked for charity in the East End of London. In October 1975 he was awarded a C.B.E.[/b]

[iambiguous]

ThIs film will always hold a special place in my heart. It is the film that my high school English teacher Mr. Way took the entire class to see. Way back in the day when the only movies I ever saw were the only movies almost everyone else ever saw: your typical Hollywood production. Mostly [for me] horror films, Westerns and screwball comedies. I really had no idea that films like this even existed. Well, maybe I had a vague inkling regarding “foreign” films.

Anyway, this is the film that actually enticed me to look for movies that were not just a mile wide and an inch deep. Intellectually as it were.

And it clearly got me to thinking about what went on to become a major theme in my “philosophy of life”: exploring the gap between men who live largely in the world of words and the men who simply choose to live instead. Not that both parts aren’t important in order to gain a firmer grasp on reality. But, let’s face it, there are folks [here for example] who are considerably more prone to “think” reality into existence than to go out into the world and test their ideas in more, say, substantive contexts.

It’s not that one is necessarily better than the other, it’s just that with respect to answering the question “how ought I to live?” what is really the point of spending your life reading about how others went about answering it? At least Basil has begun to realize that.

Even if some here never will.

It also explores the at times exasperating relationship between moral narratives and culture. And this is examined in particular with regard to the plight of “the widow”. Or in noting the villager’s reaction to the death of Madame Hortense, the “foreigner”. And there was just enough God and religion in them to rationalize it.

In other words, they had ways of thinking about these things “there” and “then” that we do not “here” and “now”. It’s just rooted in “custom” and “tradition”. And, yes, back then and there, in the politics of patriarchy.

The music here alone is worth the price of admission: youtu.be/66dJoVawkb8

IMDb

[b]Anthony Quinn had a broken foot during filming, and thus couldn’t perform the dance on the beach as scripted, which called for much leaping around. Instead, he did a slow shuffle. Director Mihalis Kakogiannis asked Anthony Quinn what the dance was, and Anthony Quinn made up a name and claimed it was traditional.

In the earlier stages of filming, Mihalis Kakogiannis and Anthony Quinn had frequent disagreements as the director felt that his leading actor was being too over-the-top.

The project was turned down by every major studio in town.

Such was the interest in an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s hugely popular novel, the film was already in the black before it opened. [/b]

trailer: youtu.be/UDuiXT9HHp4
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek_(film

ZORBA THE GREEK [1964]
Written and directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis

[b]Basil: Are you a cook?
Zorba: If you need one, I am.
Basil: What I meant was, what work do you do?
Zorba: Listen to him. I got hands, feet, head. They do the jobs. Who the hell am I to choose?

…

Zorba: And you, mister, what do you do?
Basil: Me? Well, I’m a writer.
Zorba: Excuse me, but you look it. What do you write? Love stories?
Basil: No. Poetry. Essays.
Zorba: What’s that?
Basil: Essays.
Zorba: You think too much. That is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.

…

Zorba: Me? If I was you, I would look at me straight and I would say: “Zorba, come.” Or, “Zorba, don’t come.”
Basil: Zorba?
Zorba: That’s me: Alexis Zorba. I have other names, if you are interested.

…

Basil [after agreeing to let Zorba come with him]: We’ll swim. And we’ll drink wine. And you’ll play the santouri.
[Zorba looks troubled]
Basil: What’s the matter?
Zorba: It’s about the santouri. We make a bargain, or I cannot come. In work, I am your man. But in things like playing and singing, I am my own.
Basil: How do you mean?
Zorba: I mean free.

…

Basil: Incidentally, you never told me, are you married?
Zorba: Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.

…

Zorba [looking out at sea]: Look! Look! A dolphin.
Basil [less than enthusiastically]: Why, yes.
Zorba [incredulous]: What kind of a man are you? Don’t you even like dolphins?

…

Madame Hortense [to Zorba and Basil]: They laughed, monsieur. You men are so cruel.[/b]

Actually, I could have done with a lot less of her here.

[b]Zorba: Look at Mavrandoni. He is burning.
Basil: Why?
Zorba: His son is crazy in love with the widow. But she spits him in the eye. The more she spits…the more he wants her. Look. Look at the faces of all these men. They all want her. And they hate her because they cannot have her. Only one man here…can.
Basil: Who?
Zorba: You.

…

Zorba: Boss. Why did God give us hands? To grab. Well, grab. You go, you knock on her door. You say, “I have come for my umbrella.” She will say, “Please, please come in.”
Basil: No.
Boss. Boss, don’t make me mad.
Basil: I don’t want any trouble.
Zorba: Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.

…

Basil [after a cave-in in the mine]: Zorba, leave them alone!
Zorba: Axes cost money.
Basil: I know, and I don’t care! Right now I’m just glad that nobody’s hurt. That’s all. And what’s more, I think you should let them go for today.
Zorba: Boss. You better make up your mind. Are you or are you not a capitalist?

…

Basil [after Zorba dances to near exhaustion]: What on earth came over you?
Zorba: When a man is full what can he do? Burst.

…

Zorba: That’s the way we’ll get the trees down.
Basil: An overhead cable? You’re mad.
Zorba: Why?
Basil: Well, to begin with that forest doesn’t belong to us.
Zorba: Well it doesn’t, and it does.
Basil: What does that mean?
Zorba: It belongs to the monastery. The monastery belongs to God. And God belongs to everybody.

…

Zorba [to Basil]: You know, they… They say that age kills the fire inside of a man. That he hears death coming. He opens the door and says, “Come in. Give me rest.” That is a pack of lies! I’ve got enough fight in me to devour the world!! So I fight!!!

…

Zorba: God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive…
[he slaps the table]
Zorba: …if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go. I know because a very wise old Turk told me.

…

Basil: I thought the Greeks and the Turks never talked. They just fought. Don’t tell me you never went to war.
Zorba: I don’t like that kind of stupid talk.
Basil: What’s so stupid about fighting for your country?
Zorba: Excuse me, boss. You talk like a teacher. You think like a teacher. How can you understand?
Basil: Of course I can.
Zorba: With your head, yes. You say, “This is right. This is wrong.” But when you talk…I watch your arms…your legs, your chest. They are dumb. They say nothing.[/b]

That’s when he shows Basil his scars.

Zorba [to Basil]: I have done things for my country that would make your hair stand. I have killed, burned villages, raped women. And why? Because they were Turks or Bulgarians. That’s the rotten damn fool I was. Now I look at a man, any man, and I say, “He is good. He is bad.” What do I care if he’s Greek or Turk? As I get older, I swear by the bread I eat. I even stop asking that. Good or bad, what is the difference? They all end up the same way…food for worms.

Don’t get him talking about women though.

[b]Zorba: On a deaf man’s door, you can knock forever!

…

Zorba [after the widow is killed]: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die? Tell me.
Basil: I don’t know.
Zorba: What’s the use of all your damn books…if they don’t tell you that what the hell do they tell you?
Basil: They tell me about the agony of men who can’t answer questions like yours. [/b]

Zorba spits on their agony.

[b]Basil: Zorba, what about the funeral?
Zorba: There will be no funeral.
Basil: Why?
Zorba: She was a Frank. She crossed herself with four fingers.
Basil: But I don’t understand.
Zorba: The priest will not bury her like everybody else.
Basil: But that’s dreadful.
Zorba: Why? She is dead. It makes no difference.

…

Zorba: Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You’ve got everthing except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else…
Basil: Or else?
Zorba: …he never dares cut the rope and be free.

…

Basil: Teach me to dance. Will you?
Zorba: Dance? Did you say “dance”? Come on, my boy![/b]

[iambiguous]

Joe the nymphomaniac is back. And she’s grown up. Or maybe just growing old. Older anyway.

Still, in the interim what could possibly be worse for someone addicted to sex than to lose all of the physical sensations that sex actually gives us? It is like someone who is addicted to food losing their sense of taste. Or someone who is addicted to philosophy losing all hope of ever finding wisdom:

Seligman: Wagner. “Das Rheingold, the descent into Nibelheim”. Was it that bad?
Joe: Try to imagine that in one fell swoop, you lost all desire to read…and all your passion for books and letters.

As for Seligman, he is just as enigmatic as ever. But then characters like him will always only be as perspicuous as those who create them. And who is to really say what his “role” is here?

On the other hand, Joe and Seligman might just as well be Basil and Zorba all over again. One is out in the world living life to the fullest [sexually] and the other is trying to fit it all into some sort of intellectual contraption.

Joe: Whenever I’ve told other men about my experiences, episodes in my sex life, it was easy to see that they became quite excited.
Seligman: I got excited.
Joe: Yes, about the mathematical crap, not about the story.

He is in fact still a virgin. Or “asexual” as he describes it.

Anyway, in order to regain her sexuality, Joe is willing to do just about anything. And that includes making contact with “the dangerous men”. And men who all but obliterate the line between sex and violence. 50 shades of very, very dark gray.

Look for a lot more God and religion this time around. And a lot more “theoretical” stuff.

IMDb

[b]Charlotte Gainsbourg stated in an interview with the Washington Post that Lars von Trier personally asked her to record a version of the song “Hey Joe” for the end credits after he was unable to secure the rights to Jimi Hendrix’s version, something she immediately accepted: youtu.be/3ddEkj-7qA8

Contains spoilers for Melancholia (2011) and Antichrist (2009)) Together with Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013), the only movie in Lars von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy” that does not end with Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character dying.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphomaniac_(film [same as the entry for volume I]
trailer: youtu.be/VVIa7tvgKHg

NYMPHOMANIAC: VOLUME II [2013]
Written and directed by Lars von Trier

[b]Seligman: And during orgasm, you had this vision? These two women one on each side of you. One was holding the veil with two fingers this way?
Joe: What is the problem?
Serligman: Do you even…You know who they were, right?
Joe: No, but one of them looked like the Virgin Mary, now that you mention it.
Seligman: Well, it was not the Virgin Mary, I can say that. By your description, it must have been Valeria Messalina, the wife of Emperor Claudius, the most notrious nymphomaniac known in history. And the other woman astride the creature. That was no one else but the great Whore of Babylon mounted on Nimrod in the form of a bull. Your story sounds like the blasphemous retelling of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mount – which is one of the most sacred passages of the Eastern Church. It is when the humanity of Christ is illuminated by the divine light of eternity. If anyone else had told me this story, I would have seen it as a blasphemous joke seasoned with a biblical light emanating from no less than one spontaneous orgasm.

…

Seligman [reacting to Joe’s loss of all sexual feelings]: This is nothing less than Zeno’s paradox. You are Achilles, and the tortoise is the orgasm.
Joe: Oh, come on.
Seligman: Because you were giving chase, you couldn’t reach satisfaction. That’s the paradox.
Joe: I’m sorry, but it seems as if you’re not taking this very seriously. I’m telling you about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, that I, at that point within seconds, lost all sexual sensation. My cunt simply went numb! And immediately we have to hear about this ridiculous mathematical problem.

…

Segilman [regarding a painting on the wall]: This is a typical Eastern Church icon. It usually depicts the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus and, more rarely, the crucifixion, which in the Western Church was much more prevalent. If you generalize, you could say the Western Church is the Church of suffering, and the Eastern Church is the Church of happiness. Imagine a mental journey from Rome to the East, you feel like you are moving away from guilt and pain to joy and light.
Joe: But you say you do not believe in God.
Seligman: No, but the concept of religion is interesting. Just as the concept of sex. But you will not find me on my knees with regard to either.

…

Seligman: You should not use this word. It is what is called “politically correct”.
Joe: Negro? Well, I’m sorry, but in my circles, it’s always been a mark of honor to call a spade a spade. Each time a word becomes prohibited, you remove a stone from the Democratic foundation. Society demonstrates its impotence in the face of a concrete problem by removing words from the language.
Seligman: I think that society would say political correctness is a very precise expression of democratic concern for minorities.
Joe: And I say that society is as cowardly as the people in it, who in my opinion are also too stupid for democracy.
Seligman: I understand your point, but I totally disagree. I have no doubt about the human qualities.
Joe: The human qualities can be expressed in one word: Hypocrisy. We elevate those who say “right” but mean “wrong” and mock those who say “wrong” but mean “right.”
[pause]
Joe: By the way, I can assure you that women who claim that negros don’t turn them on, they’re lying. [/b]

Incredilby enough, this entire discussion sprang from an experience Joe was relating in which two black men began to argue over which of her “holes” they preferred to penetrate.

[b]K: So, let me tell you the rules. The first rule is that I do not fuck with you, and there’s no discussion about that.
Joe: So, what do you get out of it?
K: This is my business, and I don’t want you to talk about it again. The second rule is that we have no safe word. This means that if you go inside with me, there’s nothing that you can say that will make me stop.

…

Joe: You don’t even know my name!
K: I’m not interested in your name. Here your name is…Fido.

…

K [after literally strapping Joe to the couch]: Your ass is not high enough. We can’t do this today.
Joe: What?
[He puts his fingers inside her]
K: I’d like to see you again on Thursday.
Joe: What’s wrong?
K: I think we should just see how it goes on Thursday.

…

K [holding up the riding crop]: Now I’ll hit you 12 times, and no matter how much you scream nobody can hear it down here.
[Joe screams as K is about to beat her]
K: That’s not how this goes. Most women don’t scream until after I hit them.

…

Joe [after K beats her ass viciously with the riding crop]: Thank you.
K: You’re very welcome.

…

Joe: I do not know where we get our sexuality from…or where tendencies of this sort come from. Probably a perversion created in our childhood that never manifested itself before.
Seligman: Well, oddly enough, Freud says the opposite. He talks about the polymorphic perversion of a child. Meaning that in a child, all kinds of perversions exist. And then we use the childhood to diminish or remove some of them. Basically a child is sexually polymorphic and everything is sexuality in an infant.[/b]

Then we learn about knots. The Prusik knot in particular. That’s the one K used to tie her to the couch. Well, this and the strap.

Seligman: After all this sadness, may I ask you what happened with the silent duck?
Joe: Shit. The silent duck. I’d forgotten that.

Don’t ask.

[b]Seligman [to Joe]: Well deep inside, K. seems to have been a jolly man with versatile talents. But he got that bit about Roman punishment and the 40 lashes wrong. It is true that the highest punishment was 40 lashes, but it had to be given in series of three. This is why Jesus only received 39 lashes, because three is divisible by 39, but not for 40.

…

Joe [to the sex addict therapy group]: My name is Joe…
The group: Hi, Joe.
Joe: And I’m a sex addict. But I have not had sexual relations for three weeks and five days.
[the group applauds]
Group leader: Tell us how you did it, Joe.

…

Joe [to the therapy group]: Don’t think it’s been easy, but I understand now that we’re not and never will be alike. I’m not like you, who fucks to be validated and might just as well give up putting cocks inside of you. And I’m not like you. All you want is to be filled up and whether it’s by a man or by tons of disgusting slop makes no difference.
[she turns to the group leader]
Joe: And I’m definitely not like you. That empathy you claim is a lie because all you are is society’s morality police whose duty is to erase my obscenity from the surface of the earth so that the bourgeoisie won’t feel sick. I’m not like you. I am a nymphomaniac and I love myself for being one, but above all, I love my cunt and my filthy, dirty lust.[/b]

Then she meets L. And he is as unscrupulous as she is. Then P. Ditto.

L: I need subcontractors for placing moderate pressure on individuals, whom my clients, rightly or wrongly, have a bone to pick with. Understand?
Joe: Extortion.
L: No, no, no. I always prefer the term “debt collection”.

Here things become quite bizarre. I sure as shit didn’t see it coming.

[b]Joe: Nobody knew his secret. Most probably not even himself. He sat there with his shame. I suppose I sucked him off, as a kind of apology.
Seligman: That’s unbelievable!
Joe: Listen to me. This is a man who had succeeded in repressing his own desire, who had never before given into it right up until I forced it out. He had lived a life full of denial and had never hurt a soul. I think that’s laudable.
Seligman: No matter how much I try, I can’t find anything laudable in pedophilia.
Joe: That’s because you think about the, perhaps 5% who actually hurt children. The remaining 95% never live out their fantasies. Think about their suffering. Sexuality is the strongest force in human beings. To be born with a forbidden sexuality must be agonizing. The pedophile who manages to get through life with the shame of his desire, while never acting on it, deserves a bloody medal.

…

Seligman [of P]: She didn’t take no for an answer.
Joe: No, of course not. How do you keep a wave upon the sand? [/b]

And P. comes packing.

[b]Joe [to P]: I’m thinking maybe it’s time for you to do this one on your own.

…

Joe: It’s said to be difficult to take someone’s life. I would’ve said that it’s more difficult not to. For a human being, killing is the most natural thing in the world. We’re created for it.
Seligman: Wonderful.

…

Seligman: In the beginning you said that your only sin was that you asked more of the sunset. Meaning I suppose that you wanted more from life than was good for you.You were a human being demanding your right. And more than that, you were a woman demanding her right.
Joe: Does that pardon everything?
Seligman: Do you think if it had been two men walking down a train looking for women, anyone would have raised an eyebrow? Or if a man had led the life that you lived? And the story about Mrs. H would have been extremely banal if you’d been a man, and your conquest would have been a woman. When a man leaves his children because of desire we accept it with a shrug, but you as a woman, you had to take on a guilt, a burden of guilt that could never be allieviated. And all an all, all the blame and guilt that piled up over the years became too much for you and you reacted aggressively, almost like a man, I have say. And you fought back. You fought back against a gender that had been oppressing and mutilating and killing you and millions of women.[/b]

Nothing really new here though, right?

[b]Joe: Even though only one in a million, as my dubious therapist said, succeed in mentally, bodily, and in her heart ridding herself of her sexuality, this is now my goal.
Seligman: But is that a life worth living?
Joe: It’s the only way I can live it. I will stand up against all odds, just like a deformed tree on a hill. I will muster all my stubbornness, my strength, my masculine aggression.

…

Joe [racking the gun]: No!!
Seligman [trying to mount her]: But you…you’ve fucked thousands of men.
[she fires the gun…his body falls to the floor…then the sounds of Joe running away][/b]

[iambiguous]

Like many folks who do not follow “the fight game” [or even despise it], I first came upon the name Rubin “Hurricane” Carter here: youtu.be/1FOlV1EYxmg

I kept thinking, “this would make a great movie”.

Only I figured that if one was ever made it would probably be directed by Spike Lee. Nope. Norman Jewison. But then he’s the director of A Soldier’s Story. So, when the focus is on race, his insights are to be respected.

And race is everywhere here. And given that the black man here is a boxer, the stereotypes will just keep piling up.

But: How true to life is it?

From IMDb:

[b]Some of the plot and character points fictionalized or ignored include:

• Carter was actually convicted of three muggings and served four years in prison prior to his murder trial
• Carter and Lisa Peters eventually married and later divorced
• In reality, there was no Det. Della Pesca. Not as portrayed here. The real Pesca, Vincent DeSimone, never met Carter before the Lafayette Grill incident. He also died in 1979, so he never met the Canadian couple, nor did he attend the trial 1985
• Carter did not give a speech in the courtroom when his conviction was overturned and Lesra was not in attendance
  *Carter was actually released from prison for 4 years between his two trial convictions
• Carter was dishonorably discharged from the military after four court-martials (after just 21 months’ service)
• There actually was no evidence found that proved Carter’s innocence. The reason his conviction was overturned was because the prosecution mishandled much of the evidence it had that Carter did commit the murders. When all the evidence from the real case is looked at, it seems more than likely that Carter was guilty of the murders, but got off on a technicality during his second trial.[/b]

The trick here then is make the film more “entertaining” without distorting the truth such that those who are inclined to go against Carter can then claim it twists the facts into something that allows them to suggest that maybe the man really got what he deserved. And to the extent that these are the facts here, it might have actually unfolded that way. But what are the “facts”? In the end, most of us have a political axe to grind. Thus, it reminds one of the Ferguson shooting. What really happened there?

But, given how Detective Pesca is largely a fictional character in the film, it appears that this all coming down to a racist cop who, in a personal vendetta, was out to get a black man because he refused to play the part that white cops like this insist they play, wasn’t really true at all. Not that there aren’t cops just like this out there. Think Mark Fuhrman. Multiplied thousands of times.

Rubin Carter died this year on April 14th.

IMDb

Denzel Washington trained for over a year with a boxing coach.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film
trailer: youtu.be/VrXGrdk-k9A

THE HURRICANE [1999]
Directed by Norman Jewison

[b]Jimmy [prison guard]: Rubin, calm down! It’s me, Jimmy. Talk to me.
Rubin: I ain’t takin’ no shit in here!
Jimmy: Calm down! Now tell me what’s going on. Tell me what’s happening.
Rubin: They wanna toss my cell, Jimmy. They’re gonna find my manuscript. That book is the only thing I got left in here. You understand me? That’s the only chance I got to get out of here. I lose that, they gonna lose too.

…

Rubin: You think I killed them people?
Jimmy: I don’t know, Rubin. I don’t know.

…

Theo [a cop]: We’re looking for two Negros in a white car.
Rubin: Any two will do?

…

Detective at Hospital: Are these the two men who shot you? Look carefully, Sir. Are these the two men who did this to you?
[the man seems to shake his head]
Rubin: He said “no”.
Detective: Move closer.
Rubin: He said “no”.
Detective: Move closer.
Det. Pesca: Take another look, Sir.

…

Rubin: Same old shit, huh, Della Pesca? You been after me my whole life. Now you’re trying to pin a murder jack on me. Well, it don’t fit.
Pesca: I’m gonna take your black ass down Mr. Fucking Champion of the World.
Rubin: I got your black fucking champion right between my legs you short punk bitch. You try me.
Pesca: That’s just what I’m gonna do.[/b]

Nope. Never happened.

[b]Book Lady: Okay, young man. That’ll be twenty five cents.
Lesra: 25 cent? Must not be much of a book.

…

Sam [to Lesra]: Sometimes we don’t pick the books we read—they pick us.

…

Pesca: What have we got here?
Ralph [a cop referring to Rubin]: It’s a juvenile case. He’s a kid, Sarge. He’s only 11 years old.
Pesca: It’s a nigger with a knife. I don’t care how old he is. Take care of it.

…

Judge: As for you, Rubin Carter, you’re a menace to society. If something isn’t done about you soon, you’ll become a dangerous man in later life. I only wish you were old enough I could send you to the state prison. I therefore sentence you to the state home for boys in Jamesburg…from this day till you’re 21 years of age.

…

Rubin [voiceover from his book]: Jamesburg was a place of horror that I would be forever sorry to have known existed. It was there that I spent the next eight years learning how to maim, butcher and fight for my survival.

…

Rubin [voiceover]: From that moment on, I decided to take control of my life. I made up my mind to turn my body into a weapon. I would be a warrior-scholar. I boxed. I went to school. I began reading—W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright. So I gave up all the worthless luxury that most inmates crave. The girlie books, fags, cigarettes, the moviesI hated them. In fact, I hated everyone. I didn’t even speak English. I spoke hate. And its verbs were fists. I made up my mind to turn my body into a weapon that would eventually set me free or kill anyone who sought to keep me in prison.

…

Judge: Rubin Carter, although you still contend you are not guilty of the crimes charged against you, you were afforded a full and fair trial by a jury of your peers.
[cut to the jury…all twelve are white]
Judge [to the jury foreman]: Have you reached a verdict?
Foreman: Yes, we have, Your Honor. We, the jury, find the defendants, Rubin Carter and John Artis, guilty on all counts.

…

Rubin: Look, Mae, uh, we’ve already lost two trials, and now they’ve turned down my request for an appeal. I’m sorry, it, uh- It’s over. It’s finished. And I’m gonna die in here, Mae.
Mae: There is still a chance. Now, all we have to do is hang on.
Rubin: Listen to me, now. There’s nothin’ to hang on to, Mae. I want you to divorce me. Understand? And I don’t want you to come back down here.
Mae: No. Now, you listen to me.
Rubin: Mae, now, baby, don’t…don’t make this…I am not gonna be a weight hangin’ around your neck.
Mae: You are no weight around my neck.
Rubin: Then you’re a weight around mine. Now, I can’t do all the years I gotta do in here… knowin’ they can take your beautiful face away from me anytime they want to. You understand?
Mae: Rubin. I ain’t walkin’ away from you.
Rubin: I’m dead. Just bury me, please.

…

Lesra: The man’s innocent. And he’s been in jail fifteen or sixteen years. It’s not right.
Terry: I know that’s what his book says.
Sam: Two juries found him guilty, Les.
Lesra: Two white juries.
Lisa: Hey, hey. Not all white people are racist.
Lesra: Not all black people are murderers.

…

Lesra: I ain’t never met nobody like you before.
Rubin: You think I killed those people, son?
Lesra: No, I know you didn’t.
Rubin: How you know?
Lesra: I just know.
Rubin: I’m so glad I met you, Lesra.

…

Lisa: We all believe in your innocence.
Rubin: I’ve been innocent for 16 years. That’s how long I’ve been in here. Innocence is a highly overrated commodity.
Lisa: None of us can judge what you’ve been through, but you might wanna consider…
Rubin [now angry]: You’re damn right none of you can judge what I’ve been through, because none of you have been through it. What do you know about doin ‘time? Tell me about it. What do you know about what it is to be me? What do you know about bein’ in this place?
Sam: This is too much, you guys.
Terry: Yeah, you’re right. This is too much. Um, y’all look. Let’s just go, all right?

…

Rubin [in an internal conversation with himself]: Don’t trust 'em, Lesra. Don’t trust 'em. You trust a bunch of little white-ass do-gooders more than you trust me, more than you trust us…Yeah. No more hate…Try that on, huh?..Don’t trust 'em. They’ll turn on ya. Don’t trust 'em, no. Think me and you. Me and you…See how that fits…It’s time. For what? It’s time for you to go…Don’t you turn your back on me, nigger. [/b]

But then the wall between them starts to give way. Until he loses his appeal.

[b]Sam [reading Rubin’s letter aloud]: “My number is 45472 and my job…the key to my survival…lies in my ability to do the time. This place is not one in which humanity can survive, only steel can. This will be my last letter to you. Please do not write. Please do not visit. Please find it in your hearts to not weaken me with your love. Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter.”

…

Terry: We’re here. We’ve moved down here.
Rubin: For what?
Terry: We’re in this thing full-time until you walk outta there. Hold on. Lisa wants to say something.
Lisa: Hey, Rube. Looks like you got some foot soldiers now, huh? We’re all in this together, and we’re not leaving till we all leave.
Rubin: You’re beautiful.

…

Leon [a lawyer working on Rubin’s case pro bono]: I congratulate you on your dedication to Rubin’s case. Uh, maybe I should add that in those ten years we’ve been working on this, we’ve donated our services. We’ve never asked for a dime. We never expect one. And also in that time, uh, there have been a lot of people, great people, all well-intentioned. Famous. Infamous. Or not. Boxer, singers, writers, actors, journalists, etcetera. A lot of brave people who gave of their time, and to some degree risked their reputations. People like you. And, uh, people come and go. And, frankly, nobody lasts. Nobody stays the course. Nobody goes the distance…because it’s too tough. It 's too slow, and it 's heartbreaking. It’s too heartbreaking.
Lisa: With all due respect, Mr. Friedman, what you have to understand is that we’re here. We’ve moved here, and we have every intention of staying here until Rubin is free. [/b]

Here’s the thing though. Every single one of them [with the exception of Lesra] are white. And some folks will react differently to that than others.

[b]Rubin [to Terry, Sam, Lisa and Lesra]: Listen to me. This is not Canada. Now, I can protect you in here, but there’s not much I can do for you on the outside. The only way I’m ever leaving this place is if a lot of very important people are exposed. They’re not just gonna let that happen. You understand?

…

Rubin: I wish to God John Artis had met a girl that night. I wish that, uh, he hadn’t been there at all. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of it. He got the same sentence I got…and all he had to do was lie and say I killed those people and they would have let him out and his nightmare would have been over. Most men couldn’t have stood up to that kind of torture, but John Artis did. The man is my hero. [/b]

Folks tend to forget all about him.

[b]Rubin: Now, according to the police, the murders were racially motivated. The bar didn’t serve blacks, so, naturally, this crazy nigger, Rubin Carter, had to take out his vengeance on the entire white race.

…

Myron: The law states we have to take our new evidence back to the original trial judge, and then if he turns us down, we go to the state appeals court…
Rubin: No. No. No. No. Listen to me. These people aren’t gonna just let that happen. They’ve made their careers on my case.
Myron: What are you talking about?
Rubin: I’m talking about lawyers, prosecutors, judges who have moved up the ladder on my black back. We don’t know what enemies we have out there in this state. We gotta take it out of New Jersey and take it to the federal court.
Myron: Rubin, if you go into federal court with new evidence that hasn’t been heard in the state court, the judge is gonna throw it out. Okay? That is the law.
Rubin: Then we transcend the law. We- We get back to humanity. You said if we take the new evidence before the federal judge, he’s gotta look at it before he throws it out, right? I believe that once he looks at it, he will have seen the truth. Having seen the truth, he can’t turn his back on me.
Myron: And what if you’re wrong and he does turn away? Then what? Then you throw out all this evidence that everyone’s fought to get. And you know what, Rubin? You will never be able to mention it in a court again. It is finished. It’s erased. It’s as if it never happened. This evidence is the key to getting you out of here, and you’ll be throwing it away, Rubin. When in a few more years…
Rubin: I don’t have a few more years, Myron.
Myron: Leon, help me out.
Leon: I can’t. I agree with Rubin. It’s time to move on.
Myron: Move on? What do you mean? Move on where?
Leon: The State’s biased. We’re never gonna get anything there. We have to go federal.
Myron: We can’t take the risk of going federal with this…
Rubin [pounding on the glass with the phone]: Listen to me. I’m 50 years old. I’ve been locked up for 30 years. I’ve put a lot of good people’s lives at risk. Now, either I get outta here…Get me outta here!!

…

Judge: This court is not unmoved by your eloquence and passion, but the prosecution is correct. This petition contains new evidence that has not been presented before the State Court of New Jersey, and there is no legal argument that you could make which would allow me to consider it. Therefore, you have two choices before you. I can send this case back to the state court and you can present the evidence; or, if you insist on proceeding, this evidence will be lost to you forever. You understand the choice before you, Mr. Beldock?
Myron: Your Honor, may I request a moment to confer with my client?
Judge: That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all morning, Counselor. [/b]

Here we see so clearly how “the rule of law” and “the truth” may not have much to do with each other at all. Not when the system is corrupt.

Judge: This court does not arrive at its conclusion lightly. On one hand, Rubin Carter has submitted a document alleging racial prejudice, coercion of testimony and withholding of evidence. On the other hand, Mr. Carter was tried twice by two different juries, and those convictions were subsequently upheld by the New Jersey State Supreme Court.
Lisa [to Lesra]: He’s gonna rule against us. Rubin’s gonna lose.
Judge: However, the extensive record clearly demonstrates to this court that Rubin Carter’s conviction was predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure. To permit convictions to stand which have as their sole foundation appeals to racial prejudice, is to commit a violation of the Constitution as heinous as the crimes for which the defendants were tried and convicted. I here by order Rubin Carter released from prison henceforth, from this day forward.

[A_Shieldmaiden]

youtube.com/watch?v=hr8Wn1Mwwwk

Bob Dylan captures the essence of the film.

[iambiguous]

I’m sure that, as far as some are concerned, the Devil wears blue jeans and teeshirts. Day after day after day. I know that I do. But then I have always been someone who could not possibly care less about “fashion”. On the other hand, there are no doubt many who are in thrall to the fashion industry who could not possibly care less about books and philosophy and music and film. And they well outnumber me by a rather wide margin.

And then there are those who start out more like me but then end up more like them. I think, “fuck them”. And they surely feel much the same way about me.

Hey, different strokes for different folks, right? Maybe. But fuck them anyway.

It’s just that, come on, let’s face it, there are fashionistas who are far more sophisticated than I am about the things I love. Just as there are folks who wear blue jeans and tee-shirts day after day after day who are nothing less than vulgarians. Not to mention flagrant philistines.

In fact, some folks obsessed with fashion insist that it is nothing less than art that you wear. And, hey, how do I demonstrate that it is not?

Again, maybe. But, again, fuck them all the more. As far as I’m concerned, Nate doesn’t go nearly far enough. All that Vogue/Vanity Fair bullshit that Andy comes to embrace. And almost to the very end! On the other hand, I’ve always been rather critical of 1] pop culture and 2] mindless consumption. If, of course, that’s what this is.

Bottom line: For some people [like me] the Miranda Priestlys are the scum of the earth.

Frank Zappa even wrote a song for them: youtu.be/SVEqxSlaQ64

And, no, they’re not just in the fashion industry. Of course that’s just my own personal [and highly prejudiced] opinion. I really do despise these people. Just not personally.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_ … rada_(film
trailer: youtu.be/zicgut4gpwU

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA [2006]
Directed by David Frankel

[b]Emily: Okay, so I was Miranda’s second assistant. But her first assistant recently got promoted, and so now, I’m the first.
Andy: Oh, and you’re replacing yourself.

…

Nigel: All right, everyone! Gird your loins!

…

Miranda [to Emily]: Tell Richard I saw the pictures that he sent for that feature on the female paratroopers and they’re all so deeply unattractive. Is it impossible to find a lovely, slender female paratrooper?!

…

Miranda: So you don’t read Runway?
Andy: Uh, no.
Miranda: And before today, you had never heard of me.
Andy: No.
Miranda: And you have no style or sense of fashion.
Andy: Well, um, I think that depends on what you’re…­
Miranda: No, no. That wasn’t a question.

…

Nigel [of Andy]: Who is that sad little person? Are we doing a before-and-after piece I don’t know about?

…

Emily [on the phone]: Andrea, Miranda decided to kill the autumn jacket story for September­ and she is pulling up the Sedona shoot from October. You need to come into the office right this second and pick up her coffee order on the way.
Andy: Now?
Emily: Now, get a pen and write this down.
Andy: Now?
Emily: Now, get a pen and write this down. I want one no-foam skimmed latte with an extra shot¡­ and three drip coffees with room for milk. Searing hot. And I mean hot.
[she hangs up][/b]

I know: yuppie scum. The Starbucks crowd.

[b]Emily: When I am not here… Andrea, you are chained to that desk!
Andy: But what if I have to…
Emily: What? No! Nothing! One time an assistant left the desk. Oh, because she sliced her hand open with a letter opener, and Miranda missed Lagerfeld just before he was about to board a 17 hour flight to Austrailia. She now works at TV Guide.

…

Nigel [holding up a pair of fashionable high heels]: I guessed an 8 and a half.
Andy: I don’t need those. Miranda hired me. She knows what I look like.
Nigel: Do you?

…

Andy: So none of the girls here eat anything?
Nigel: Not since two became new four and zero became the new two.
Andy: Well, I’m a six…
Nigel: Which is the new fourteen.

…

Andy: You know, I’m not going to be in fashion forever.­ so I don’t see the point of changing everything about myself just because I have this job.
Nigel: Yes, that’s true. That’s really what this multibillion-dollar industry is all about anyway, isn’t it? Inner beauty.

…

Miranda [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same]: Something funny?
Andy: No. No, no. Nothing’s…You know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I’m still learning about all this stuff and, uh…
Miranda: ‘This… stuff’? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select…I don’t know…that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent…wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.[/b]

Yes, there really are people who take this stuff that seriously. I wonder who came up with the idea about some of the stuff that I wear – denim jeans and cotton tee-shirts. Let me thank them belatedly.

Andy: So then I said, “No, I couldn’t see the difference¡­ between the two absolutely identical belts” and you should have seen the look she gave me! I thought the flesh was gonna melt off her face.
[Nate chuckles]
Andy: It’s not funny. She’s not happy unless everyone around her is panicked, nauseous or suicidal. And the Clackers just worship her.
Nate: The who?
Andy: They call them Clackers. The sound that their stilettos make in the marble lobby. It’s like, “Clack, clack, clack. Clack, clack.” And they all act like they’re curing cancer or something. The amount of time and energy­ that these people spend on these insignificant, minute details, and for what? So that tomorrow they can spend another $300,000 reshooting something¡­ that was probably fine to begin with to sell people things they don’t need!

Yes, that’s how she feels now.

Andy: No, I don’t want to quit. That’s not fair. But, I, you know, I’m just saying that I would just like a little credit… for the fact that I’m killing myself trying.
Nigel: Andy, be serious. You are not trying. You are whining. What is it that you want me to say to you, huh? Do you want me to say, “Poor you. Miranda’s picking on you. Poor you. Poor Andy”? Hmm? Wake up, six. She’s just doing her job. Don’t you know that you are working at the place that published some of the greatest artists of the century? Halston, Lagerfeld, de la Renta. And what they did, what they created was greater than art because you live your life in it. Well, not you, obviously, but some people. You think this is just a magazine, hmm? This is not just a magazine. This is a shining beacon of hope for… oh, I don’t know… let’s say a young boy growing up in Rhode Island with six brothers pretending to go to soccer practice when he was really going to sewing class and reading Runway under the covers at night with a flashlight. You have no idea how many legends have walked these halls. And what’s worse, you don’t care. Because this place, where so many people would die to work you only deign to work. And you want to know why she doesn’t kiss you on the forehead and give you a gold star on your homework at the end of the day. Wake up, sweetheart.

Again: These people really, really do manage to talk themselves into believing that this is something utterly invaluable to the world we live in!! Ah, but this is the pep talk that turns Andy into “one of them”.

[b]Nigel [to Andy]: There’s nothing in this whole closet that’ll fit a size six.

…

Nate: Why do women need so many bags?
Lilly: Shut up.
Nate: You have one. You put all your junk in it, and that’s it. You’re done.
Doug: Fashion is not about utility. An accessory is merely a piece of iconography used to express individual identity. [/b]

Sure, why not.

[b]Nigel: There’s a scale. One nod is good, two nods is very good. There’s only be one actual smile on record and that was Tom Ford in 2001. If she doesn’t like it she shakes her head. Then of course there’s the pursing of the lips.
Andy: Which means?
Nigel: Catastrophe.

…

Andy: So because she pursed her lips, he’s gonna change his entire collection?
Nigel: You still don’t get it, do you? Her opinion is the only one that matters.

…

Miranda: I need the new Harry Potter book for the twins.
Andy: Okay. Okay. I’ll go down to Barnes & Noble right now.
Miranda: Did you fall down and smack your little head on the pavement? We have all the published Harry Potter books. The twins want to know what happens next.
ASndy: You want the unpublished manuscript?
Miranda: You know everyone in publishing. It shouldn’t be a problem, should it? And you can do anything, right?

…

Andy: Nate. Come on. I’m still the same person I was. I still want the same things. Okay? Nate; Mm-hmm.
Andy: I promise. Same Andy, better clothes.
Nate: I like the old clothes.

…

Emily: Andrea, my God! You look so chic.
Andy: Oh, thanks. You look so thin.
Emily: Really? It’s for Paris, I’m on this new diet. Well, I don’t eat anything and when I feel like I’m about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.

…

Miranda: Paris is the most important week of my entire year. I need the best possible team with me. That no longer includes Emily.
Andy: Wait. You want me to…­No, Miranda. Emily would die. Her whole life is about Paris. She hasn’t eaten in weeks. I-I can’t­ do that. Miranda, I can’t.
Miranda: If you don’t go, I’ll assume you’re not serious about your future,­ at Runway or any other publication. The decision is yours.

…

Emily: I don’t care if she was gonna fire you or beat you with a red-hot poker! You should have said no.
Andy: Emily, I didn’t have a choice. You know how she is.
Emily: That is a pathetic excuse. Do you know what really just¡­ gets me about this whole thing is that, you know, you’re the one who said you don’t really care about this stuff. And you don’t really care about fashion. You just wanna be a journalist. What a pile of bollocks!
Andy: Emily, I know you’re mad. I don’t blame you.
Emily: Face it, you sold your soul the day you put on that first pair of Jimmy Choo’s. I saw it. And you know what really just kills me about this whole thing, is the clothes that you’re gonna get. I mean, you don’t deserve them. You eat carbs, for Christ’s sake!!

…

Andy [after Christian kisses her on the cheek]: Lily. Lily, he’s just a guy I know from work. Lily: Yeah, that looked like work.
Andy: Look, you’re making a big deal out of…
Lily: You know, the Andy I know is madly in love with Nate…she’s­ is always five minutes early and thinks, I don’t know, Club Monaco is couture. For the last 16 years, I’ve known everything about that Andy. But this person? This “glamazon” who skulks around in corners with some random hot fashion guy? I don’t get her.
Andy: Lily.
Lily: Have fun in Paris.

…

Nate: Andy, what the hell is wrong with you?
Andy: I-I didn’t have a choice, okay? Miranda asked me, and I couldn’t say no.
Nate: I know. That’s your answer for everything lately, “I didn’t have a choice.” Like this job was forced on you. Like you don’t make these decisions yourself.
Andy: You’re mad because I work late all the time and I missed your birthday party. And I’m sorry.
Nate: Oh, come on. What am I, four?
Andy: You…­You hate Runway and Miranda. And you think fashion is stupid. You’ve made that clear.
Nate; Andy, I make port wine reductions all day. I’m not exactly in the Peace Corps. You know, I wouldn’t care if you were out there pole dancing all night as long as you did it with a little integrity. You used to say this was just a job. You used to make fun of the Runway girls. What happened? Now you’ve become one of them.
Andy: That’s absurd.
Nate: That’s okay. That’s fine. Just own up to it. And then we can stop pretending like we have anything in common anymore.

…

Nate [as Andy takes yet another call from Miranda]: You know, in case you were wondering - the person whose calls you always take? That’s the relationship you’re in. I hope you two are very happy together.

…

Andy: Uh, what the hell is this?
Christain: What does it look like? It’s a mock-up.
Andy: Of?
Christian: Of what American Runway will look like when Jacqueline Follet is the new editor in chief.
Andy: What? They’re replacing Miranda?
Christian: Yeah. And she’s bringing me in to run all the editorial content. You’re really surprised? Jacqueline’s a lot younger than Miranda. She has a fresher take on things. Not to mention American Runway’s one of the most expensive books in the business. Jacqueline does the same thing for a lot less money. And Irv…Irv’s a businessman, you know.
Andy: Miranda will be devastated. Her whole life is about Runway. He can’t do that to her.
Christian: It’s done. Irv’s gonna tell Miranda after the party for James.
Andy: And she has no idea?
Christian: She’s a big girl. She’ll be fine. [/b]

Oh, you can count on it.

[b]Nigel: When the time is right, she’ll pay me back.
Andy: You sure about that?

…

Miranda: I was very, very impressed by how intently you tried to warn me. I never thought I would say this, Andrea, but I really…I see a great deal of myself in you. You can see beyond what people want and what they need­ and you can choose for yourself.
Andy: I don’t think I’m like that. I couldn’t do what you did to Nigel, Miranda. I couldn’t do something like that.
Miranda: Mm. You already did. To Emily.
Andy: That’s not what I…­No, that was…that was different. I didn’t have a choice.
Miranda: Oh, no, you chose. You chose to get ahead. You want this life, those choices are necessary.
Andy: But what if this isn’t what I want? I mean, what if I don’t wanna live the way you live? Miranda: Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us.[/b]

Finally, that brings Andy over from the dark side. But I don’t buy it for a second.

Editor: I called over there for a reference, left word with some snooty girl, next thing you know I got a fax from Miranda Priestly saying that of all the assistants she ever hired, you were by far her biggest disappointment.
[Andy looks glum]
Editor: And if I don’t hire you I’m an idiot. You must have done something right.

Makes you feel warm all over.

[iambiguous]

Here the bottom line seems all too apparent. You either like the character who is struggling to survive or you don’t. And then, depending on that, you either care if “all is lost” or you don’t.

And since the character here is being played by Robert Redford and Robert Redford is well know to espouse liberal [even radical] political values, I’m sure that many reactionaries hope the son of a bitch does drown.

Really, lots of folks think this way. Or I think they do. For example, if the character here had been played by, say, Chick Norris, I’d have been considerably less concerned myself if all were lost. In fact, I doubt I’d even have watched the film.

On the other hand, some folks will have less sympathy for him simply because he owns a yacht. He’s rich. He’s not one of ours but one of theirs. And there are all manner of additional ways in which we dole out our sympathy or our contempt for others in predicaments like this.

And he is 77 years old. Or Redford is. So it’s not like he hasn’t already lived a long and properous life.

And here his vessel collides with [of all things!] a container. One that [apparently] fell off of a container ship. And one that is filled with [of all things!] sneakers. A “fluke accident” doesn’t even come close to describing it.

Lets face it, this film will surely be a lot more of absorbing for the folks who actually know something about sailing. All we know for certain is that on a boat this guy is incredibly resourceful. At first. But most of us just don’t know enough about it to second guess him. Could he [should he] have done something else instead?

Then we wait for it: the inevitable storm. The big one. The one that changes everything. Now how resourceful is he?

Of course the owner of a 40 foot yacht is going to be the owner of the mother of all emergency rafts. And this one is mindboggling to see the least. Unfortunately, it seems to come with leaks. Fortunately, this one seems to come with a raft all its own.

But there is always another storm.

And then the inevitable passing ship. The irony here being that it is stacked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of containers. And it is because one of them dislodged and fell into the sea from another ship – the one his yacht collided with – that he is in this predicament in the first place.

And then the Hollywood ending. The guy is saved. And I find myself cheated. And I liked the guy. Hard to explain.

IMDb

[b]This is the only movie in the 100-plus year history of international filmmaking that has only one actor and one writer/director but eleven executive producers as well as six other producers of varied titles.

For Redford (at age 77) the most grueling aspect of the shoot was not the stunts, most of which he insisted on performing himself, but the dismal daily routine of being perpetually waterlogged throughout the production.

The Chinese characters shown on the container (which is supposed to be the name of the shipping company) in the beginning actually mean “good fortune”.

When it was screened out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival (2013), the film received a reported 9-minute standing ovation.

The director adhered to what he termed his “bungee cord rule”. A general shooting principle whereby the camera could not be above, below or farther from Redford than a cord could be stretched.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Is_Lost
trailer: youtu.be/Lk_R04LfUQU

ALL IS LOST [2013]
Written and directed by J.C. Chandor

The man: 13th of July, 4:50 pm. I’m sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn’t. And I know you knew this. In each of your ways. And I am sorry. All is lost here, except for soul and body, that is, what’s left of them, and a half day’s ration. It’s inexcusable really, I know that now. How it could have taken this long to admit that I’m not sure, but it did. I fought till the end. I’m not sure what that is worth, but know that I did. I have always hoped for more for you all. I will miss you. I’m sorry.

On the other hand, in the vastness of “all there is”, where do we insert it?

The man [after realizing his drinking water has been contaminated with salt water]: God!
[he grips his head with both hands raises it up in despair]
The man: FUCK!!!

[iambiguous]

One of those classic tales in which the gap between what the characters expect to happen and what actually happens instead is, well, enormous. But here it is all about how many laughs you can stuff into it in a couple of hours.

A lot.

As with Midnight Run above this one is put together largely for the sheer entertainment value it provides.

A lot.

The premise: Grimm wants nothing more than to get out of town. And all he needs to make this happen is a little cash. The kind they keep in banks. You see, the urban jungle has finally got him down for the count. The rat race has all but beaten his mental health to a pulp.

Or as Chief Rotzinger puts it: All we’ve got going for us is the city. Our only hope is they’re mired down in the same shit that you and I have to wade through every day.

Unfortunately, though, he needs Loomis and Phyllis to pull it off…

Along the way we bump into every imaginable cliche [and character] you can think of related to the Big City. On the other hand, there are things here you’re pretty sure could only happen in New York. That “jousting match” for example.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is noted at IMDb:

According to Australian “Movie” magazine, “the script has been described as Dog Day Afternoon meets Animal Crackers”.

Perfect.

IMDb

The Mexican flower woman at the airport who cries “Flores! Flores para los muertos!” is a tribute to A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) in which a Mexican flower woman cries the same phrase outside Stanley Kowalski’s apartment. It also could be a reference to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), another film about a bickering couple.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Change
trailer: youtu.be/lFshKzWxGzI

QUICK CHANGE [1990]
Written in part and directed by Howard Franklin, Bill Murray

[b]Street Barker: Nude women! Nude women!
[Grimm dressed as a clown walks by]
Street Barker: Clowns Welcome! Clowns welcome!

…

Bank Guard: What the hell kind of clown are you?
Grimm: The crying on the inside kind, I guess.

…

Loomis: We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die!
Grimm: Button it up, pal. Nobody likes a whiner.

…

Chief Rotzinger [on phone]: This is Rotzinger.
Grimm: Who are you?
Chief Rotzinger: Chief of police. Get your butt out of there now!
Grimm: You know, I was in 'Nam with a jerk like you.
Cop [listening in]: Oh, boy…

…

Grimm [to Chief Rotzinger]: God I hate this town.

…

Chief Rotzinger: I’ll get you the choppers. I’ll get you the bus, the Harley and the monster truck just as soon as you give me the damn hostages.
Grimm: Oh, yeah. I’m sure no harm will come to me once I’m inside the bank all by myself.
Chief Rotzinger: At least give me the women.
Grimm: Get your own women!

…

Chief Rotzinger: Listen, I’ve had just about enough of your comedy, clown. We’re coming in through the plate glass.
Grimm: Alright, I gotta hang-up now, because I gotta go kill everybody.

…

Reporter: Sir, is human life at stake?
Loomis: The stink of death was in the air! He said he knew how to make men sit up and bark!!

…

Grimm: What’s this?
Hostage [pointing to his watch]: It’s just a gift. It’s an Audemars Piguet. Moon phase, 18-karat gold, alligator band. Thing cost me 12,000, but it’s appreciating every day. As I say, it’s my gift to you.
Grimm: I can’t keep this.
Hostage: Don’t be silly.
Grimm: No, I would be beholden. May I buy it? I mean, would you take three bills for it?
Hostage: Three hundred dollars?
Grimm: Unless someone makes a higher offer. Anyone want to go higher than 300 on this? It’s got a moon on it. Great. And here’s my watch. It’s a Timex…and the band is the Twist-o-Flex by Speidel. I appreciate this damn thing more and more every day too.

…

Phyllis: A real man? Who has to use a gun and hold people prisoner? You’re not a man. You’re a coward.
Hostage: She does not speak for the rest of us Mr. Clown. We think that you are quite brave and manly.
Phyllis: You big PUSSY! You’re all a bunch of PUSSIES!

…

Grimm [sobbing]: The man is an animal! Ripping out phones, urinating on desks… you see what he did to Ms. Cochran’s shirt? There’s a scratch here, I mean, it’s not deep, but… it’s there.
Phyllis: It’s okay.
Chief Rotzinger: Did he hurt anybody else? Is the strain beginning to show on him?
Grimm: “If I could sleep ten days and nights in a rice paddy, I could certainly last in this lousy bank.” This is what the animal said to us! He says to Ms. Cochran here…
[he makes humping motions at Phyllis]
Grimm: “…Baby! Up your butt with a coconut!” I think he was prepared to do it! Except I saw no coconut. He, uh, he had no coconut to my knowledge.
Chief Rotzinger: No coconut, huh? What about dynamite? Did you see any?
Grimm: Any? It’s everywhere! It’s on him. It’s on us. Hostages strapped to tables as shields. The man is an animal!!

…

Grimm [to Loomis and Phyllis]: Let’s see Miss Meryl Streep try to vomit on cue, huh?

…

Loomis [after the “jousting” match]: It’s bad luck just SEEING a thing like that!

…

Phyllis [seeing Grimm and the robber]: This is a fucking nightmare!
Grimm: He doesn’t even know the capital of Iowa.

…

Robber [with Grimm’s wallet]: This must be my lucky day. You got some real money here. Four dollars.
Grimm: Well, I couldn’t get to the bank today. Let me give you this watch. It’s worth $12,000. I talked the guy down. He ended up giving it to me for 300. Nice, huh?
Robber: God, are you a sucker.

…

Grimm [as the robber drives away]: Thanks. Bye-bye. Oh, sir, you forgot your map. And our million dollars!

…

Phyllis: If Einstein here hadn’t honked the horn we could’ve changed clothes before they were stolen.
Loomis: It was an accident, Phyllis.
Phyllis: So was Chernobyl!
Grimm: True, but Loomis didn’t irradiate anybody.

…

Grimm [to Phylllis]: God, I hate this town!

…

Grimm: I’m glad the son of a bitch robbed us. It’s just another reminder of how happy and lucky we are to be getting out of here.

…

Loomis [shouting for a taxi]: Ten thousand dollars for a taxi!
Phyllis: And a blow job!

…

Grimm: I booked the eleven o’clock to Martinique.
Phyllis: Martinique?
Loomis: Martinique? But I don’t know anything about Martinique.
Grimm: What did you know about Fiji?
Loomis: Well, nothing, really.

…

Loomis [beseeching the heavens]: Please God! We need a cab! One lousy fuckin’ cab!!

…

Johnny [holding a gun to Grimm’s back] This ain’t my dick in your back!
Grimm: That’s a relief.

…

Phyllis [after Grimm starts winging it in Lombino’s warehouse]: What the hell are you doing?
Grimm: I have no idea.

…

Loomis [to Grimm]: You just ripped off the Mob! You were born for this! It must be in your genes.

…

Phyllis [getting on the bus]: What’s that smell?
Grimm: Used wine.

…

Grimm: When you say “near” the airport…
Bus Driver: .48 miles.
Grimm: Alright. When do we get there?
Bus Driver: 22:30 hours.
Grimm: When is that? In human time.
Bus Driver: 10:30.
Grimm: 10:30. Say you had to walk it…
Bus Driver: With that injured individual?
Grimm: Yes.
Bus Driver: I can’t give you a precise figure on that.
Grimm: Come on! Make a guess.
Bus Driver: 21 minutes.

…

Chief Rotzinger: Do you work for the clown or does he work for you? Does the clown work for Lombino too?
Monetti: What clown?!

…

Loomis: You’re not gonna hit me again, are you?
Grimm: Again? I haven’t hit anybody since I was 9.
Loomis: Yeah, but it was me you hit.

…

Loomis [looking up at the sky]: Is that our plane?
Phyllis: No, if it were our plane, it would be crashing.

…

Flower Lady: Flores! Flores para los muertes! Flores! Para los muertes! Los muertes! Los muertes! Los muertes!
Grimm: There must be alot of competition for that corner.
Phyllis: It’s a good thing she’s not too symbolic or anything.
Loomis: What does that mean anyway? Flores por el muerte?
Grimm: I sure couldn’t tell ya’.
Phyllis: Aw, you know Grimm, it means flowers for the dead.
[Grimm shoots her an angry glare]
Loomis: Oh! We’re all gonna die! We’re a-a-a-ll gonna d-i-i-e!!!

…

Lombino: You’ll never take me alive, Rotzinger.
Chief Rotzinger: Save yourself the disgrace, Lombino.
Grimm [to Loomis]: It’s the king! He’s come for the king!!!

…

Chief Rotzinger: Vince Lombino, a.k.a. Russ Crane…you’re under arrest for murder in first degree and second degree, arson, pandering, sale of weapons, felonious assault, blackmail…
Loomis: Use of spouse as a shield.

…

Chief Rotzinger [to his deputy]: Hey, remember, we gotta commend this “Cipowski.” I mean, Chipowski.[/b]

And then it dawns on him…

[iambiguous]

The horse is afflicted. The child is afflicted. Is it possible that both might be made well again?

The thing however is this: horses aren’t people. And fixing people can become considerably more problematic. On the other hand, if you can fix the horse than it sometimes becomes considerably less problematic to bring the people along. And here it includes the child’s mother. And, in her own way, she’s afflicted too.

Tom is a “horse whisperer”. In part that means he’s as comfortable around horses as he is people. Or the people he loves. He just has a way with horses that most of his own species don’t. The whispering part.

Here’s the thing though:

‘Horse whispering’ is somewhat of a misnomer. Native Americans would sometimes tame a horse by jumping on its back and biting its ear to make it stop bucking (the pain would be worse if the rider’s teeth were jerked by the horse’s head). Some observers misunderstood what was happening and assumed the rider was whispering in the horse’s ear to calm it. IMDb

Horses have accidents. Sometimes with people riding them. Some of these people are fictional and some of them are not: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ho … elebrities

Here the accident results in Grace’s leg being amputated…and the horse suffering terrible wounds in turn. And Grace’s whole life revolved around horses and riding them.

And that’s what leads them to Tom.

How realistic is it? For example, the scene with Tom and Pilgrim in the field. I don’t know. I know as little about horses as I do sailing.

But the message seems loud and clear: the folks who live out there in Marlboro Country are just somehow more down to earth, authentic, real, alive etc. than the dreadful city slickers like us. Plus they are a lot closer to God.

Buy it if you must. But films like this have a way of portraying “salt of the earth” folks without any the warts that the folks who grew up around know damn well they have.

IMDb

Listed in the closing credits as ‘equine technical advisor’ is a man named Buck Brannaman. He’s the subject of a 2011 documentary titled Buck (2011) which relates his own troubled past and how he became a ‘horse whisperer’. In the Redford movie, there’s a picture of Buck and his brother Smokie Brannaman in the montage of old family photos during a scene at the Booker home. It’s the one with two young boys with Santa Claus; Buck is the boy on the left.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_Whisperer_(film
trailer: youtu.be/W_1dKoCQlxY

THE HORSE WHISPERER [1998]
Directed by Robert Redford

[b]Annie [seeing the condition of Pilgrim, Grace’s horse]: Oh Jesus…

…

Liz: Listen, I, I know that you’re being hit with a lot now…and it’s hard to think about anything else, but I have to talk to you about Pilgrim. I’ve never seen an animal with these injuries still breathing. I’d like your permission to put him down. It’s…it’s really the best thing.
Annie: Uh, I…uh…you…you mean shoot him?

…

Liz: Annie, no matter what I do, this horse will never be the same.
Annie: Well, look, I…I…I…I just don’t know. It’s Grace’s horse, so when she…
Liz: It’s not right to make it suffer.
Annie: I cannot deal with this now, Liz. I…if you need a yes or a no, then don’t do it.

…

Annie: You’ve got to stop doing that.
Robert: What?
Annie: Helping her all the time. Running to her every time she trips, anticipating her.
Annie: You know, Annie, this didn’t just happen to you.

…

Annie: Grace, listen to me. Hmm? Your leg is just healing, and you have to give the rest of you time as well.
Grace: Is that your version of a pep talk?
Annie: Well, you’re not staying home all day, feeling sorry for yourself. You’re gonna get up, and you’re gonna figure this out.
Grace: Fine.
Annie: It’s still early. What’s your next class?
Grace: Gym.

…

Grace [to Robert]: I want to see pilgrim. [/b]

Not a good idea.

[b]Liz: Watch your step. Mind how you go. It’s muddy back there.
Grace: Back there? W-Well, what do you, what do you mean? Why isn’t he in the barn with the other horses?
Liz: Well, Grace, you see…Pilgrim just isn’t the same horse that he used to be.

…

Liz: You should’ve told her, Annie. This animal is beyond help.

…

Annie [to her assistant at work]: Get me every publication on riding, racing, breeding. Everything. Medical publications as well. Veterinarian journals. And tell them it’s me, and I want it now.

…

Annie [voiceover reading aloud from a book]: A million years before man they grazed the vast empty plains, living by voices only they could hear. They first came to know man as the hunted knows the hunter. Before he used horses for his labors, he killed them for meat. The alliance with man would forever be fragile. For the fear he struck deep into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged. Since that neolithic moment when a horse was first haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature’s soul and sooth the wounds they found there. The secrets uttered softly into troubled ears. These men were known as the Whisperers.[/b]

That’s when you start wondering: uh, oh, is this going to be another one of those “spiritual” journeys deep down into the “soul” of man. And beast. Just sort of.

[b]Annie [on the phone]: I’ve heard you help people with horse problems.
Tom: Truth is, I help horses with people problems.

…

Grace: I’ve decided about Pilgrim.
Annie: Oh.
Grace: I think we should put him down. It’s not fair to let him suffer.
Annie: Well I think that’s a very…
Grace: And maybe we should put me down too.

…

Annie [on the phone]: Uh, this article said that you were, you were a, a horse whisperer.
Tom: Oh, they said that, huh? A whisperer. Hmm.

…

Tom [on the phone]: Ma’am, am I being too polite here when I say “no” in Nevada? Does that mean “yes” where you are? Look, I’m really sorry for your situation, but there’s nothing I can do. You just called the wrong person is all. I’m sure there’s some fine horse doctors back east.
Annie: No, but I don’t want a horse doctor. I want, I want you.
Tom: So I…I hope everything goes okay with you and your horse.
Annie: Well, but you see, it’s not my horse…
Tom: So, so, so goodbye now.
[he hangs up]

…

Annie: Maybe we should give him another sedative.
Liz: We did.

…

Annie: Don’t they believe in signs around here?
Grace: What would they say? Ten miles to big rock. Twenty miles to bigger rock.[/b]

Next up: Big Sky country.

[b]Tom: Why do I get the impression that you’re just not driving through?
Anie: I want you to take a look at my horse. Now, it won’t take long. And if you still feel the same way, then I’m sure I can find…
Tom: You thinkin’ about personally driving me back east?
Annie: Oh, no, no, no. No, I brought him along, and my daughter, too. We’re at, we’re at the Lazy J Motel.
Tom: You hauled him all the way out here?
Annie: Well, yeah. I had a trailer. It’s not like I made him run alongside the car.
Tom: Well, ma’am, I appreciate the pains that you’ve obviously gone through…
Annie: Look, please don’t do the ‘‘Shucks, ma’am’’ thing again. I have just driven a few thousand miles for a few minutes of your time. I have brought him all the way out here. Just take a look at him. If you still feel the same way…I will be on the road by morning, and you’ll never hear from me again, okay? Deal? We’re at the Lazy J Motel. Whenever you’re free. You don’t have to call.
Tom [chuckling to himself after she walks to her car]: Jesus!

…

Grace [to Tom]: Just in case she hasn’t told you, which she probably hasn’t…I don’t wanna be a part of this, okay?
Tom: Mm-hmm.

…

Robert [on the phone with Annie]: So, How are you doing out there in Marlboro country?

…

Tom [after examining Pilgrim]: I have to be honest with you. I still feel you’ve made a long trip for nothin’. But before I even think about it I need to know somethin’ right now. And it’s a question for Grace. You see, when I work with a horse, it’s no good just me doin’ it. The owner’s gotta be involved, too.
Annie: Well, that’ll be a little complicated.
Tom: You can make it as complicated or as easy as you like. But she’s the one that’s gonna be ridin’ him. Am I right? Hey? Right? Now, here’s the deal. I don’t know that I can do anything. But I’m prepared to give it a go, if you’ll help.
[Grace scoffs]
Tom: Oh, you have a problem with that?
Grace: Isn’t it, like, obvious?
Tom: Not to me. Either you want to or you don’t.
Annie: Look, I’ll talk to–
Tom: Excuse me. With all due respect, this is her decision, not yours. Now, I don’t wanna waste anybody’s time here, mostly mine.
Grace: Well, nothin’ else to do around here.
Tom: That’s not good enough. I can’t help you.
[He turns and walks away]
Grace: What do I have to do?
[he keeps walking]
Grace [louder]: I said, what do I have to do?

…

Diane [to Tom and her family]: Well, that’s just what we need! A vegetarian from New York on our cattle ranch.

…

Annie [the city slicker]: I’ve never been on a cow farm before. It seems to me that the bulls have the best time. Just laying around the fields waiting for someone to come along and ask them to do their work.
Tom: You get born a bull you have a 90% chance of being castrated. Served up as hamburger. So on balance, I reckon I’d choose bein’ a cow.

…

Tom: Jogger, huh?
Annie: I don’t jog, Mr. Booker, I run.
Tom: Well that’s lucky for you. The grizzlies around here mostly go for the joggers.

…

Grace: Are you afraid of anything, Tom Booker?
Tom: Of growing old. Not being of much use.

…

Annie [watching Tom apprach with a horse]: Uh, oh…

…

Annie: What was your wife like?
Tom: She had reddish hair. Not, not quite. Almost. Depended on the light. She had green eyes. And when she played the cello, that was it. Something just went right through me. I’d never heard music like that played before. And the way she looked when she played it. And then one day, she looked at me that way, and that was it…for both of us. I knew she didn’t want to be a rancher’s wife, but I wanted to give it a try. I thought maybe she could give music lessons to the kids in town, the school maybe…and that our kids would grow up with my brother’s kids and play together. But she wasn’t happy here. ‘‘Too much space,’’ she said.
Annie: So why didn’t you stay in Chicago?
Tom: Wasn’t enough space. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Anie: But how did you know, for sure?
Tom: Knowing’s the easy part. Saying it out loud’s the hard part.

…

Grace [in reference to her amputated leg…sobbing]: Who is ever going to want me like this?
[her mom walks over and holds her]
Grace: Who’s ever gonna want me like this? Nobody will.

…

Tom [after Grace tells him about Judith, Pilgrim and the accident]: Grace. Now, I’m not gonna tell ya it’s gonna stop feelin’ this bad. But I will tell you you didn’t do anything wrong. The same thing could’ve happened to me…or to Frank or to Joey. And it doesn’t make any sense to try to figure out why these things happen. There was a boy from the Blackfeet reservation, he used to do some work around here for a while. Sixteen, strong kid, good kid. He and I were really, really good friends. One day he went swimming and dove headfirst into the lake… and right into a rock. And it snapped his neck, paralyzed him. And after the accident I’d look in on him from time to time. But he wasn’t there. It was like his mind, his spirit, whatever you want to call it, just disappeared. The only thing left was just anger. Just sort of as if the…the boy I once knew just went somewhere else.
Grace: I know where he goes.
Tom: I know you do. Don’t you disappear. You do whatever you have to do to hold on. I’ll tell you one more thing. You know when Pilgrim reared up against that truck? You know what I think? I think that damned horse loved you so much he was tryin’ to protect you. That’s what I think.

…

Tom [to Pilgrim]: There’s something you gotta do tomorrow, boy.

…

Tom [after Pilgrim fails to respond the way he wants him to]: Gonna have to do somethin’ different, Grace.
Grace: It’s not gonna hurt him, right?
Tom: Nothing we’ve done has hurt him. Grace, this is Pilgrim’s chance, and it’s yours, too.

…

Tom: Grace, look at him. Look at him. He’s okay. And you never did anything to let him down.
Grace: No…
Tom: Grace, listen to me.
Grace: No, I can’t.
Tom: Grace, you’ve gotta do this. Trust me just one more time.
Grace: Do what?
Tom: I want you to come over here and sit next to me. Start right here where the neck is and the head, and I want you to stroke him. I want you to rub him and feel him all over. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Go on ahead. Grace. Now we’re going to show Pilgrim here how to help you get on him. Because, you see, there’s a point where neither of you is gonna need me anymore. And we’re there.

…

Robert [to Annie]: I always knew I loved you more. Didn’t bother me. I guess I felt kind of lucky, a little amazed that a woman like you would want to be with a man like me. And I guess I thought if I could do everything right-- If I could-- If I was the best husband I could be, the best father… even, even being a good lawyer only mattered because of what it meant for us. If I could do all that it wouldn’t make any difference if we loved each other the same or not. I didn’t ask for more. I told myself I didn’t need any more. But…the truth is, you don’t know how you feel about me. You don’t know if you want a life with me anymore. And the truth is I don’t want you to come home until you do know…one way or the other. Okay?[/b]

[iambiguous]

Klaus Nomi? This guy: youtu.be/gma5IUNMTn0

And this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Nomi

And this guy: brightestyoungthings.com/article … -later.htm

Think Ziggy Stardust on steroids.

So, sure, why not do a documentary on him? After all, it’s not like you’ll be bored. Though some may well be repulsed. Repulsed? At this…this…freak?

In other words, it’s just another one of those “in the eye [and the mind] of the beholder” sort of things. A “different strokes for different folks” juncture where, if you don’t like bizarre, new wave homosexuals, you’ll probably not be all that inclined to tolerate him. Let alone to be impressed. Or, as likely as not, you’ll have never even heard of him.

There are people who live lives utterly devoted to music. And when you are able to incorporate music into that part of your life that pays the bills it is all the more gratifying and fulfilling. Klaus would probably have paid others to listen as he sang – to share his passion with them – but he was able make a living singing and performing. At least for a while. And there are not many of us who are actually able to live much of their lives in their own little world.

I know that I do now and I can really relate to someone like him. On the other hand, which part was and which part was not “part of the act”? And there was the gap between Klaus the performer and Klaus the man. His personal life was considerably more fragile.

And then the part where Nomi [like so many others before him] has to decide the extent to which he is going to let those who are basically just in it for the money turn him into a commodity…someone the “mainstream audience” might find more palatable.

There’s a clip of him with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live. They were introduced by the host Martin Sheen. He backed Bowie up on The Man Who Sold the World and DC-15. The show where Bowie wore the dress.

Look for AIDS. The very, very beginning of it all.

Klaus Nomi died of AIDS. He was only 39. One of the very first to go.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nomi_Song
trailer: youtu.be/3KiEP5Ctfk0

THE NOMI SONG [2004]
Written and directed by Andrew Horn

[b]Man: I had no idea who he was. I remember I was on West Fourth Street and I suddenly saw this wacky little character among the crowd. I mean you talk about stopping traffic. It was amazing. Everyone just stopped what they were doing and said, “what the fuck was that?” People said, “what is that?” not “who is that?”

…

Man: It was like a cartoon not a reality. An alien. Very mysterious. Austere. And you’re thinking, “are you sure this guy exists”?

…

Man: It was like a car crash. You’re staring at this guy and you’re wondering, “what the hell is going on? Is this art? Is this guy crazy?” You were just fascinated.

…

Ann Magnuson: Those of us who came to New York did so because we did not fit into where we came from. We were misfits. And the only place misfits could go was New York City…We all came here to be stars, but on our own terms, our own turf.

…

Gabriele la Fari: And there he was. This little strange man. He needed a place to live so I set him on in this apartment. It was a scene. People came to see him. People came to see me.

…

Gabriele la Fari: Yeah, he could sing a little butI didn’t no what direction that could have taken him. Sometimes he was singing like Maria Callas, sometimes like David Bowie. I thought that he was doing what I was doing when I was 7 years old…just playing around. I had a smirk on my face when I saw him doing that…I never thought that that would put him out there.

…

Stage announcer: It’s newer than new, it’s nower that now, it’s wower than wow.

…

Ann Magnuson: Out of nowhere Klaus got up on this mound of dirty, dusgusting New York snow and started singing this aria from an opera. I was stunned. It was this magical moment where the streets were completely deserted and there was Klaus spotlighted on this mound of filthy snow singing this beautiful piece of music. He really seemed like a creature from another dimension.

…

Kristian Hoffman: Then Klaus came on and it was a whole different level of accomplishment. It wasn’t silly. It could be perceived as silly because of the way he looked. But he was so convincing and his voice was beautiful. I remember David McDermmit after the first performance – after every performance – had to come out and assure the audience that it was not an electronic recording. That Klaus was really singing. People just didn’t believe it was him.

…

Ann Magnuson: What I used to do is I would be backstage and I’d peek out the curtain to see how the audience was reacting to the acts. And then when Klaus went on I’d go up to the balcony so that I could look down to see Klaus perform and watch the audience. It was always so exciting because all these young rock and rollers who were pretty cynical would become just like statutes…stunned.

…

Ann Magnuson: I know this is going to sound sentimental but I remember crying…it was just such a great moment of theatre to see the audience just being so stunned…astonished. I think the pinnacle of success is to leave people absolutely speechless.

…

Ron Johnson: So when I went to Max’s, I looked around the streets and it was jammed with people and I said what is this and Page said it was the people waiting to get in to see Klaus. The surprise that I had at Max’s was that I was a little bit in shock. I swear to god it was something that I had never seen before…but could not figure out. The people were sort of just dumbfounded. As though they had come to see a freak…and it seemed like everyone was interested in this freak.

…

David McDermott: He was never really very ordinary. He realized that it was a wonderful act that he had. To put it in a rather flippant and superficial side of something that was he really felt rather deeply. There was just this sort of dichotomy. Deep down he was very superficial. And on the surface he was very profound.[/b]

A joke. I think.

[b]Kristian Hoffman [after Klaus took the act on the road]: The severest test for us was New Jersey. That was the days of the hair bands. They played at these big stadiums. Twisted Sister had a gig and Ron knew some of the members so we thought it would be good to open for them in New Jersey.
JJ French [lead guitarist for Twisted Sister]: The club was only about 2 miles from the George Washington Bridge. So we were only about two miles geographically from Manhattan. But culturally we were 8 million miles away as far as these kids were concerned. They had no desire to see a performance artist do anything truly bizarre. Before he went on I visited him in the dressing room to introduce myself. I had expected that nod, nod wink, wink kind of thing…like hey man, we’re all in this together. But I didn’t get any of that. I got a serious artist. And I went, whoa, good luck. I mean this was New York performance art done in a blue collar suburban bar.
Kristian Hoffman: It was horrifying. And then we realized that maybe the world isn’t…that all of the world isn’t quite ready for him yet.

…

Kristian Hoffman: The show we saw had some girls in leotards dancing, doing some very choreographed Joffrey Ballet kind of moves. The whole band was up there like with their long hair and their long faces and their big belt buckles doing a 70s arena rock thing. And we didn’t think that was right – that just wasn’t modern. Our show really had a beginning and an end and it all hung together and it all kind of made sense. Their production, it…it was just a rock band singing songs.

…

Man: The whole concept at that point started changing into a business deal that had no regards for what Klaus Nomi was, where he was coming from, who he was involved with and where his market was in the United States. It became nothing more than a negotiation point for money and it all started and ended in France.[/b]

But: Is he pop…or classical? Who cares. He just “took off” over there. As in the sort of fame that draws the paparazzi. That’s when the record companies “over here” took another look.

[b]Kristian Hoffman: So after Klaus came back from Europe…and he was sick…we realized that this was terminal, that he was not going to recover and it was really all over. I remember seeing him at a dinner and I would usually go over to him and give him a hug and a European kiss on each cheek. And…and…and I was just afraid to. I just didn’t know if this was contagious or what. I came up to him and I hesitated and he just put his hand on me and said it was all right, don’t worry about it. Which really made me start to tear up…and that was the last time I saw him.

…

Friend: I was on the phone with Klaus. He has called me from the hospital. Channel 4 news was on. It was like the lead story…this “gay cancer”…describing it. And Klaus that day had discovered some bumps or lesions on his skin. Everything was so new. The disease was so new. Right at that moment we were both watching the news at the same time. He was like “oh my god, I have these…I have these on my arm. What is it? I have it!”

…

Old friend [after Klaus is hospitalized with AIDS]: AIDS was so new. It was like you were given your death sentence if they said that you had it. They called it “gay cancer”…and the words were so ugly together. And here he was in the hospital and I kept thinking that I loved him and I felt bad for him but I’m the person that he, for whatever reasoning of his own, fucked over and left behind and he’s calling me. I think he was just lying there crying and was on the phone with whoever would answer…As much as I was moved and shared in Klaus’s anguish over what he was going through, I was too afraid to go visit him in the hospital.

…

Friend: a lot of people just took off. They didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t know how to deal with it. Was it something I could catch? Was it like typhoid or the plague? You heard rumors, you heard stuff from the underground.

…

Gay friend: The party was over and now it was about surviving. It was terrible. It was just a real sad, sad time. And I never, ever dreamed that I’d be…and even though we used to make fun of how “the bomb” was going to go off tomorrow…we didn’t really think that it was going to go off at all. But it did…I wish that I had been there for him in his last days, but all I can say is that I, along with a lot of others were in denial…and I just couldn’t deal with someone dying like that.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be…grifters? On the other hand, there’s a sucker born every minute. And, like the man said, “two to take them”. At least two.

But the best grifters are those superbly equipped to con each other. So, while they may start out working as a team to fleeze the marks, one by one they get picked off by the leader of the pack. Only here there are two of them.

Also, here the characters that walk off with the loot are merely the least of all the truly dislikeable scumbags.

Note: make sure you watch this one all the way to the end. In other words, don’t miss the epilogue. It’s the icing on the cake. The place where all of the, uh, secrets are revealed.

Bottom line:

Detective Ray Duquette: People aren’t always what they appear to be. Don’t forget that.

Only he did. And it cost him his life.

This is basically the sort of world that many imagine when they contemplate the consequences of nihilism: “anything goes as long as I get what I want”. The “kingdom of ends” reduced down to the crassest, most cynical and most unworthy of human beings. And I don’t deny that it can in fact come to this. But, really, what is this next to the brutal reality of capitalism day in and day out? A systemic cynicism perpetrated by the most “civilized” of men and women. Some of whom will actually defend it “on principle”…or in accordance with one or another God’s “will”.

At least here the folks that do go down are among the least sympathetic people imaginable. And the “winner” is about as deeply enscouned in the trailer trash/working class as one can get. I guess [for now] this is what we’ll have to settle for in the way of a “class struggle”

Anyway, if nothing else, it points a finger in the direction of just how ambiguous sex crimes can be. He said, she said. And all of the gaps we have to sometimes deal with in a world sans God.

Great soundtrack.

IMDb

Despite prominent billing, Bill Murray only gets about 20 minutes of screentime.

But that’s all it took for him to steal the show.

As for all the nudity:

[b]Denise Richards declined to use a body double for the threesome scene.

In an interview with Maxim magazine Kevin Bacon noted that he has a no nudity clause in his contract, and that he was a producer of the movie, so technically he could have sued himself.

Neve Campbell never appears naked in any sex scenes (even in the Unrated version) because she has a no-nudity clause written into her contract.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Things
trailer: youtu.be/m9gWo4lLSEU

WILD THINGS [1998]
Directed by John McNaughton

[b]Sam writes the word SEX on a chalkboard. The students cheer. Next to it he writes CRIMES. The students jeers.

Sam: We’ve all heard the terms “date rape,” “sexual harassment.” We’ve discussed some of these issues right here in this very room. Our guests today come from the Blue Bay Police Department. Detectives Duquette and Perez are here to give us what we hope will be a fresh perspective on the subject… [/b]

Indeed, the cynicism revolves all around this issue.

[b]Kelly [to Suzy]: So, where’d you get those shoes, “Whores For Less”?

…

Kelly: Where’s your hose, Mr. Lombardo?

…

Sandra: I know you’re fucking Barbara Baxter. So what?
Sam: So, maybe I’m a one-woman man now.
Sandra: Oh, poor Sam. Do you really think you’re gonna get one of these Blue Bay women to marry you? You’re a hired hand, a good lay. That’s as far as it goes. Enjoy it, while it lasts. [/b]

Boy, does he have plans for her.

[b]Sandra: [/i]My[/i] daughter does not get raped in Blue Bay!!!
Ray Duquette [a detective]: You’re saying that Sam Lombardo raped her?
Sandra: That son of a bitch must be insane to think he can do this to me!!

…

Gloria: What about asking her to take a polygraph?
Ray: What about asking the pope to take a piss test? This is Blue Bay. Ask a Van Ryan to take a polygraph and Tom Baxter will cut you off at the knees.
Gloria: You afraid of Tom Baxter? You afraid of Sandra Van Ryan? [/b]

Not necessarily. But money has been known to talk in places like this. And justice has been known to walk as a result of it.

Artie: If they clear you, you get reinstated…
Sam: You never get clear of something like this. It stays with you. It follows you around forever.
Artie: You’re gonna need some help. You’re gonna need an attorney.
Sam: And maybe you can tell me which attorney in South Florida is gonna wanna go up against the Van Ryans in court.

Well, there is one…

[b]Sam [noting that Ken is wearing a neck brace]: What do you do to your neck?
Ken: Oh, this? I don’t have to wear it all the time.
[looks out the window and takes it off]
Ken: There was an insurance guy around here earlier.

…

Suzie: Kelly’s pissed at Mr. Lombardo too. She’s in love with him. He’s been her fantasy since her old man died. Then she found out Mr. Lombardo was doing her mom, and that was it.
Kelly: You skanky bitch! [/b]

And it’s all a charade!

[b]Tom [to Ken]: See you at the club.

…

Kelly [to Sam]: Whooo, it worked! we screwed the bitch!

…

Suzie [to Sam and Kelly]: So, how much is eight-and-a-half million divided by three?

…

Sam: After tonight, the three of us are not to be seen together ever again.
Kelly: After tonight?

…

Kelly: I can’t believe you called Sam. What’s the matter with you?
Suzie: I’m scared, that’s what…I’m scared, there’s no one to trust.
Kelly: You can trust me.

…

Suzie: You - You are gonna fuck me over, aren’t you?
Kelly: Oh, for chrissake.
Suzie: You are!
Kelly: Are you retarded, or just brain-dead from whiffing fumes out there in the swamp?
Suzie: That’s that I am to you, isn’t it? Swamp trash, just like my mom.
[Kelly tries to touch Suzie’s shoulder, but Suzie bats her away]
Suzie: Don’t!
[Suzie slaps Kelly across the face…Kelly slaps Suzie back]
Kelly: You stupid cunt!

…

Sam: Kelly was only supposed to be framed.
Ray: The bitch shot me.
Sam: Shit, you’re a cop. Don’t they teach you to disarm people? You know, shoot them in the leg or somethin’?
Ray: Did you become squeamish about this stuff before or after you bludgeoned little Suzie to death with a wine bottle?
Sam: Kelly wasn’t supposed to die, Ray. It wasn’t part of the plan. [/b]

The plan? And what might that be? And whose plan?

[b]Suzie: Before Medea sailed away on the Helios she killed King Creon and the Princess, with what? A: A rock. B: Spear-gun or C: a bit of Poison.
Sam: P-poison!
Suzie: Good guess.

…

Gloria: Sellin’ your boat?
Walter: This was Suzie’s boat. Guess she won’t be needin’ it now.
Dloria: Funny. I wouldn’t have guessed Suzie was a sailor.
Walter: Old lady had her tested once. They said her I.Q. was way up there…around 200 or some such shit. That girl could do just about anything she put her mind to.

…

Ken: May I ask you a question, Miss Toller? Did you enjoy being a guest of the state? I hope I never make you mad. Cash is just walkin’-around money. The check is the balance of the numbered account…minus the million we set aside for Ruby and Walter, less my usual fee. Case closed.
[Suzie starts to walk away]
Ken: Suzie…be good. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Joe Strummer. Dead and gone. So: All we have left now are the different ways in which folks remember him. Well, that and his music. And the band. The Clash. And the Clash was not exactly just “one more band”: youtu.be/2hHUdW1N3v8?list=PLIsd2 … Mj5iRceHM5

And Strummer was a musician who always had something to say about the world that we lived in. In or out of the lyrics, on or off the stage. Think Bono.

Politically in other words. It wasn’t just all about the music. That’s why the Clash wasn’t just the next Sex Pistols.

Of course some folks don’t take to kindly to “celebrities” trying to tell us how we’re supposed to think about things like that. But this usually comes down to politics itself. Right? If we happen to generally share their views they become considerably less irksome.

It’s all about perspective. Much like everything else with regard to “the arts”.

But here we see just how seriously some can take being called an artist. All of these intense, internecine squabbles about which music reflected the most authentic, real, cutting edge “sound”. And then, if you dared to move on, to expand your musical horizons, you were sometimes stomped on by your biggest fans. Think “Dylan goes electirc”.

The rest is just about how Joe became Joe. The part about dasein. The part where we connect the existential dots. Starting with, say, his childhood. For example, his father was a diplomat. Turkey. Egypt. Mexico. Germany. Rhodesia. Joe was born in Turkey. And his childhood was not exactly what you would call a “typical” or “normal” one. Which is to say it could have gone in any number of directions.

Then there’s Joe after the Clash. Every which way but…up? But every which way that’s for sure. I sure as hell wasn’t able to connect the dots. Not these dots.

Strummer was only 50 when he died. Of natural causes. Well, of premature natural causes.

I always look for Joe in The King of Comedy. He plays a character described as “street scum”.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Strumm … _Unwritten
trailer: youtu.be/XqRMXgpz2ak

THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN: JOE STRUMMER [2007]
Directed by Julien Temple

[b]Joe: I was in a school where people hung themselves. I quickly realized that you either became a power or you were crushed. I had a gang because I realized you had to fight fire with fire. Bully or be bullied. And there was no protection from anybody or anything. But I was happy at school because I was in charge of my own world.

…

School friend: And all the time I had known him, I had never met his parents. It was as though they didn’t even exist.

…

Joe: I could remember hearing the Rolling Stones. The sound was so different from what we were hearing. It was the sound of another world, of another reality. That was when I decided to follow music…that would be the only way to live.

…

Joe: I would say from my childhood I learned that authority was something to be avoided if possible, attacked if you could get in on the attack without being burned. I’d say that was high on my list of priorities.

…

Joe: In 1968 the whole world was exploding. It was a great year to come of age.[/b]

But then there was his brother, David. He became a fascist. Then a suicide.

Joe: There was only one answer to what you were going to do after school…and that was art school.

Next up: Newport

[b]Man: Newport in 1973 was a very working class town. You had the steel mills, you had the coal mines, docks. To the art college there was nothing PC about Newport in those days. There’d be fights in the streets. It was a tough place. Joe came down from the South of England, the leafy suburbs and he suddenly found himself in this industrial town that was was completely alien from anything that he had experienced in the past. But he loved it.

…

Man: He used to sign on and he got various jobs – working in a carpet factory or a leather factory.
Woman: He got a job in a graveyard…
Joe: I got this job in a graveyard. The first morning they told me to dig a grave but I wasn’t strong enough. That morning I had gone down about 3 inches.
Woman: He got the sack when he was found sleeping in the grave.[/b]

Back to London. And squatting.

[b]Woman: It wasn’t just squatting because we were poor. It was a political act. That you can’t just leave buildings empty when there are people homeless.

…

Woman: He was never bothered about money. Money didn’t mean anything to him. But he did like fame.[/b]

And then came the Sex Pistols. And then the rest was history.

[b]Man: It was electrifying. It was so different. It was a million years ahead. I think it was Joe…he was the only one who saw anything in it. The Sex Pistols destroyed everything else that was in town. It was over the second they came out on stage.

…

Joe: That’s the one thing about punk. If you were ugly you were in.

…

Joe: I think too much. Or not enough. I mean I think all the time. I think that thinking is a lot of fun. I mean I can’t think of any other point of getting up in the morning, doing everything, going to bed again. Thinking about it all makes it the point, you know?

…

Bono: There was a moment when everything just stopped…1976, 1977…suddenly ideas became more important and a certain integrity became more important than driving a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool. Rocks stars were like Gods. You were lucky to be in the room with them. All that came to an end after the Clash…There was a violence in the air. I was terrified. I was excited. And rock and roll…it wasn’t just entertainment in that moment. It wasn’t a matter of life and death…something much more serious. So me and my mates would sit up all night trying to figure out how we could be in bands that meant as much as the Clash.

…

Scribble on a bathroom wall: IS IT OUR DESTINY NEVER TO KNOW WHAT IS TRUE?

…

Man: Joe knew the culture of America, he knew the literature, he knew the music backwards and forwards. They hit it off immediately. Here was this unlikely meeting of guys that grew up thousands of miles apart…but the same things moved us. He was passionaite. He sang every word like he meant it. He sang about things that were deep down in his soul. He sang about injustices. He sang about everything as if it was urgent.

…

John Cusack: I don’t know if his politics was separate from his art. He didn’t ask you to just question authority. He asked you to explore the very nature of authority.

…

Johnny Depp: I suppose the initial effect that the Clash had on me was the proper effect. You were experiencing a sincerity. Not only in the lyrics but in the music as well.

…

Matt Dillon: There was romance that the Clash had with New York at that period of time. I remember bumping into a guy named Jack Trekker. He drove a cab. And he told me they weren’t like other rock stars in New York. Their limosine was Jack’s Checker cab.

…

Drummer: When you use drugs you just don’t care anymore. I was self-seeking. I was dishonest. I didn’t give a fuck about anyone…There wasn’t a lot of choice really. You can’t have a band with a drummer that can hardly play sometimes.[/b]

So they sacked him for being a heroin addict. And that’s when he “started injecting”.

[b]Woman [being interviewed about the Clash]: They’re not punk rock now. They’re just what the Stones are.

…

Joe: Obviously, life’s full of sick jokes. We could have seen that one coming. But it still was a shock that it actually happened. You know, we turned into a lot of the pop stars. I couldn’t believe that we had turned into the people we were trying to destroy.

…

Joe: Standing there singing the songs as we got bigger and bigger towards the end. I began to feel worse and worse. It had something to do with what those songs are saying.
[the camera cuts from Joe singing a song in a stadium to singing the same song in a small pub]
Joe: It felt right when we were part of the audience, part of the movement. Once it became thousands of miles removed from that…I started to freak out.

…

Bono: What pisses me off about the Clash is that this extraordinary band should still be here.

…

Woman: When Joe was on, he was fantastic, but when Joe was off he was just not available.[/b]

Then Joe becomes a…hippie. And then on to off the deep end. Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros? From Conan: youtu.be/mqEOOvoEi_w

[b]Joe: Which part of life do we find the truth? Is it the beginning, the middle, the end? Or is it all just a crazy truth?

…

Woman: He died of a congenital heart defect that he was unaware of. It could have struck him down at anytime. [/b]

[iambiguous]

For all of Temple Grandin’s extraordinary accomplishments one suspects that she would not exactly be greeted warmly by the folks from, say, PETA. Which is to say that, while she “revolutionized practices for the humane handling of livestock on cattle ranches and slaughterhouses”, we all know to what end, right?

Actually, that’s what kept popping into my head over and again. The fact of what she had accomplished as a scientist and engineer on the one hand and all of the many ways folks might react to it morally on the other hand.

But then how does one go about connecting the dots between autism and animal rights? You wonder: What would a discussion of deonotological ethics be like with Temple Grandin?

Autism is a frame of mind we read about [and a lot these days] but what is it really like to be autistic? And yet, as with so many other “mental afflictions”, there are varying degrees of affliction. In other words, some are able to function out in the world with others better [much, much better] than others.

Temple is one of the luckier ones. She is even able [eventually] to grasp autism self-consciously. She knows what it is and she tries to communicate to those not afflicted with it such that more rather than less functional relationships might be established. But there’s just no getting around the part regarding “how ought I to behave” out in the world. Even the world’s most sophisticated minds are still stumped in that regard.

Claire Danes is just phenominal here. You have to keep reminding yourself that this is the same actor who plays Carrie Mathison on Homeland.

This being an HBO movie, she won the Emmy that year for Best Actress. She also won the Golden Globe in the same catagory.

IMDb

[b]The scenes in which cows appear to be drowning or otherwise in danger were shot not with living cattle but instead with detailed model cows called “stuffies” or an animatronic cow.

HBO bought a herd of cows for the cattle scenes in this movie. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin_(film
trailer: youtu.be/cpkN0JdXRpM

TEMPLE GRANDIN [2010]
Directed by Mick Jackson

Temple: My name is Temple Grandin. I’m not like other people. I think in pictures and I connect them.

And then through the camera they try to give you some measure of how she views the world. But it’s still rather fuzzy to me. And then there’s the “savant” part…

[b]Temple [looking at all the cows]: Aunt Ann, what is this place?
Ann: Just holding pens. You don’t have those on the East Coast, huh?
Temple: Is this where they slaughter them?
Ann: Yes, it is.

…

Temple [to her Uncle Mike]: Do you get “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” here?

…

Eustacia [Temple’s mother, to Ann]: You do remember, though, something’s gonna set her off.

…

Ann: Why don’t you want to go to college?
Temple: People. I don’t understand people. At least the people at school know I don’t understand them - and some of them are my friends anyway.
Ann: What don’t you understand?
Temple: Girls get all goofy over boys. They talk about silly pop groups and clothes and say things like, “Why are you so grumpy?” when I’m happy. And I say, “I’m happy.” And they say, “Well, you don’t look happy.” And I say, “Can’t you see I’m thinking? And can’t you see I’m sad?” And I don’t know what they’re talking about.

…

Ann: Temple!
Temple [in the metal contraption that encloses the cows and calms them down]: Close it on me.
Ann: Temple, let’s get you out of…
Temple: Close it on me!
Ann: Don’t be silly!
Temple: Please! Close the sides. Close the sides. Please! Harder! More!

…

Sign on Temple’s new gate: Pull Brass Rod…Gate Opens…You have 47 seconds to drive through. TG.[/b]

Temple goes to college. And that means people. And that means a lot of confusion. All those “goofy” boys and girls.

Eustacia: Is she all right?
Doctor: Is she interested in playing with other children?
Eustacia: No, not really.
Doctor: Plays with toys, dolls?
Eustacia: She loves to rip things.
Doctor: And no speech yet at the age of…
Eustacia: Four. She’s four. No, not yet. I’m sure it’s just a phase, but…
Doctor: Your child is clearly autistic.
Eustacia: Autistic. I’m…I’m not familiar…
Doctory: She’s an infantile schizophrenic.
Eustacia: Infantile…So…So when would she grow out of it? I mean, what’s the next step for…
Doctor: We generally recommend an institution.
Eustacia: For how long? I’m not sure I would like that. I really… I… I wouldn’t want to miss her first words.
Doctor: She probably will never speak. And I’m afraid there is no course of treatment. I’m talking about institutionalization.

That was back then. Only Mom just wasn’t buying it. Temple’s miracle was her mother.

[b]Doctor: Perhaps if you had your husband call me.
Eustacia: My husband is a very busy man and I graduated from Harvard - so why don’t you try me?
Doctor: I’m sorry. It’s been suggested that it may be a lack of bonding with the mother, that at a crucial phase, the mother was cold, aloof, when the child most needed physical affection.
Eustacia: But that is not what happened. We have another child and she is not like this, and I did not do anything different. Temple rejects me. I…I want to hug her and she won’t let me. I’m supposed to have done this? Well, then, I can undo it. You just tell me what to do.
Doctor: As I said, I recommend institutionalization

…

Temple [overwhelmed by everything in the college cafeteria]: I only eat Jell-O and yogurt! I only eat Jell-O and yogurt! I only eat Jell-O and yogurt!!

…

Roommate: I’m your roommate. What are you doing?
Temple [inside the “squeeze machine” she made]: It’s a machine I just made. It feels like a hug. Do you want a hug? It feels really good.

…

School psychologist: So when you got in your machine, did it make you feel like a cow?
Temple: No, I didn’t feel like a cow.
School psychologist: But it gave you pleasure.
Temple: It made me feel good, gentle.
School psychologist: The hug made you feel good. But you don’t like to be touched by people.
Temple: No.
School psychologist: Do you like to touch yourself?
Temple: Touching myself’s okay.
School psychologist: But when the squeeze machine touches you…it feels better?
Temple: Yes.
School psychologist: It gives you release?
Temple [thinkig of the release mechanism on the box]: Yes, there is release. [/b]

But this idiot thinks she is some kind of sex pervert and has the box removed from her room! You can’t help but wonder if this actually did happen to her. Anyway she makes a brand new [much more sophisticated] “squeeze box” at the ranch and, once back at school, turns it into a science project.

[b]Temple [to a student in the box]: Do you feel, A, claustrophobic, B, constricted, C, no different, D, comfortable, E, relaxed?

…

Eustacia [trying to explain Temple to the administrators at a boarding school]: There’s no excuse for hitting someone, but I will say this in her defense. I have never seen her strike unless she’s been provoked. And other children have taunted and bullied her constantly. They make fun of her because she doesn’t understand their jokes. She spins to comfort herself. She talks fast, often too fast, and she talks repetitively, and then the children called her a tape recorder. Then she’ll go into a panic attack, and then they make fun of that, too. [/b]

Man, that kind of shit really pisses me off: making fun of someone just becasue they are different. And this speaks volumes about the culture we live in. The mindlessness of so many assholes like this it mass produces.

[b]Eustacia [anguished]: I have done everything that I can for Temple, and if it isn’t good enough, then it just isn’t good enough. But you cannot even begin to imagine the chaos, the upheavals, the tantrums and the pain. Her pain!
Dr. Carlock: You seem to be acting as if you have done something wrong, when it’s obvious you’ve done everything right. I think she’s terrific.

…

Dr. Carlock: Can you bring everything you’ve seen to your mind?
Temple: Sure.
Dr. Carlock: Even if it were an everyday object, like, say, shoes?
Temple: I see all the shoes I’ve ever worn, my mother’s and other people I’ve met. And you have three pairs, one needs a new heel. And I see the newspaper ads and TV ads and…Can’t you?

…

Dr. Carlock: This girl has an amazing mind.
Teacher: Try teaching her math. Her algebra’s hopeless.
Teacher: Or French. “Why are there so many fish in France?!”
Dr. Carlock: I want to show you something. She thinks in pictures. That’s why she does so well when she can see the things that are being discussed. Like biology. Or…Or shop. Those are concrete things. But language or algebra? It’s just gibberish to her. She’s an amazing visual thinker.

…

New roommate: Do you like Star Trek, too?
Temple: Yes.
New roomate: Who’s your favorite?
Temple: Mr. Spock. We have a lot in common.

…

Temple [to her roommate]: I’ve always wanted to understand the gentleness that other people feel by being hugged by their mothers. And now I’ve made a machine that lets me do that. It feels like a wire gets reconnected. Like something gets repaired.

…

Temple [speaking at her graduation]: If it wasn’t for my machine, I wouldn’t be standing here today. Instead I’d be hiding in my room or spinning in circles to calm myself, or hitting someone. When I was younger, I closed myself off from people. I didn’t even speak until I was four. There’s a highfalutin name for this condition. Autism. But because of my machine, I’m able to know the kindness and love that have been given to me by others to reach this point in my life.

…

Temple [after a cow is killed]: Where does it go?
Don: Meat processing.
Temple: No, where does it go? It was here, and now it’s meat. Where did it go?

…

Temple: Cattle are prey animals. My autism allows me to understand prey animals well. I can visualize the flight zones of cattle. A handler outside the flight zone can keep an animal circling in a calm and orderly manner. But stepping into the flight zone panics the cattle, and they change from soft moos to loud mooing. Like, prey animals don’t make noises that will draw attention to them unless they’re trying to warn other members of the herd.
Stockyard manager: So they’re warning each other they’re going to be slaughtered?
Temple: No. No. No, sir. The loud mooing is the same whether they’re gonna be dipped, driven around a hard corner or taken to slaughter. I mean, they have no idea what’s gonna happen to them…
Stockyard manager: I’m glad we agree on that.
Temple: …but they’re spooked. And spooked cattle don’t act straight. They get bruised, scraped, drowned, and that all costs money. And it takes a good half hour to calm a herd and that costs money, too. It’s not a good way to run a stockyard. Well, I believe what’s good for cattle is also good for business.[/b]

Now the guy stops patronizing her and listens.

Guard: Sorry, ma’am. No women on the lot.
Temple: My name is Temple Grandin. I’m a grad student at Arizona State…
Guard: That’s the rules, ma’am.
Temple: But I’m a grad student at Arizona State and I was here last week.
Guard: Complaints from cowboys’ wives. They just don’t want no women on the yard. I’m just doing my job.

So she trades in her VW Beetle for a pickup truck, throws mud all over it, rolls around in the mud herself and becomes a man. The guard just waves her in.

[b]Temple [to the dumbfuck cowboys who plastered her windshiels with bull testicles]: I’ve eaten bulls’ testicles! Ate them in my aunt’s ranch. Regularly! This is a waste!

…

Temple [to Scott]: I published two articles in the Arizona Farmer-Ranchman. One was on good moos and bad moos. The other was on head restraints in cattle chutes and killing pens. They’re really badly designed. Just terrible systems!

…

Temple: I can’t protect the cattle unless I design the whole system from the moment they enter to the moment they get slaughtered.
Dr. Carlock: Are you talking about a slaughterhouse?
Temple: Of course they’re gonna get slaughtered. You think we’d have cattle if people didn’t eat ‘em everyday? They’d just be funny-lookin’ animals in zoos. But we raise them for us. That means we owe them some respect. Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be. I wouldn’t want to have my guts ripped out by a lion, I’d much rather die in a slaughterhouse if it was done right.
Dr. Carlock: It seems to me that you should be the one to design the slaughterhouse…
Temple [interrupting]: We can easily do a way where they don’t feel pain and they don’t get scared.
Dr. Carlock: Did you hear what I said, Temple? I think you’re the one who should design it. [/b]

Sure, it’s a perfectly reasonable argument if you buy into the other argument that raising cows to be slaughtered is a perfectly reasonable argument. Hmm. Autism and irony?

[b]Temple [at Dr. Carlock’s funeral]: I’m leaving now.
Eustacia: Well, it isn’t over yet.
Temple: I said goodbye when I saw him. He’s not there. I’ve got him in my mind. Do you know where they go?
Eustacia: No. No, I don’t

…

Slaughterhouse executive: I’m sure that’s nice for the cattle, but the cost, Miss…
Temple: How much money does it cost you to pay handlers to prod the cattle along and then hold them back when they stampede? How many times a day do your chutes stop because of pile-ups? How many cows break a leg and bring everything to a halt? With my system, there’d be none of that. There’d be a steady, calm flow.
Slaughterhouse executive: Well, that sounds great, but you don’t have any idea of whether it’ll work or not.
Temple: But I do. I’m like Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison. I know my system will work 'cause I’ve been through it a thousand times in my head.

…

Temple [to her old college roommate]: I touched the first cow as it was being stunned. In a few seconds, it was gonna be just another piece of beef, but in that moment, it was still an individual. It was calm. And then it was gone. I became aware of how precious life was. And I thought about death and I felt close to God. I don’t want my thoughts to die with me. I want to have done something.[/b]

Even autistic folks rationalize. Or, rather, those who are able to.

[b]Temple [at a conference on autism]: Well, I think spinning is good. And rolling, too. Self-stimulation does seem to eventually calm the nervous system. It can be a way to compensate for not being held. And being held by another person is scary, but rolling or, or being held by surfaces produces the calming effect that ordinary children get from a hug.
Woman in audience: How old is your child?
Temple: Well, I don’t have children. No, I’m autistic. And I need the sensation of being hugged. And I’ve developed a machine that I get into and hugs me and I’m different afterwards. I’m more social. Well, I didn’t speak until I was four and now I have a B.A. And a master’s and I’m studying for my doctorate.
Woman in audience: How did you learn to speak? How’s it possible?
Temple: Please don’t shout. Please don’t…Most autistic people are very sensitive to sounds and colors. Over-stimulation hurts. You know, people talking too much at once, you know, can cause us to panic.
Woman: How did you get cured?
Temple: Well, I’m not cured. I’ll always be autistic. My mother refused to believe that I wouldn’t speak. And when I learned to speak, she made me go to school. And in school and at home, manners and rules were really important. They were pounded into me. I was lucky. All these things worked for me. Everyone worked hard to make sure that I was engaged. I mean, they knew I was different, but not less. You know, I had a gift. I could see the world in a new way. I could see details that other people were blind to. My mother pushed me to become self-sufficient. I worked summers at my aunt’s ranch. I went to boarding school and college and those things…Those things were uncomfortable for me at first, but they helped me to open doors to new worlds.

…

Title card: Temple is a professor at Colorado State University and lectures worldwide on autism and animal handling. In North America, over half the cattle are handled in humane systems she has designed.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Spies. Why do they do it? For “the money”? For “the cause”? For “the adventure”?

Or even for very, very complicated reasons embedded in the mind of someone like Robert Hannsen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

His exploits were featured in the film Breach: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=179469&p=2371784&hilit=breach+directed#p2371784

Here is the list of American spies from wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_spies

And on it are the two spies featured in the film below: Christopher John Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee.

Oddly enough, they were not employed by the CIA or the FBI or the NSA or the Armed Forced. Instead, one was a “federal contractor”. The other a dope dealer.

The historical context here is important. The secrets they passed on to the Soviets in the mid 1970s follows an extremely turbulent decade in America – one in which many young people embraced many political narratives aimed at upending “the system”. Some were just more ideological [idealistic] about it than others. And Chris was, well, sort of like that.

Chris worked at TRW [RTX in the film]. And, through his job, he begins to grasp just how American foreign policy really works: as an adjunct of Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

Chris also owns a falcon. The falcon’s name is Fawkes. As in Guy Gawkes. He eats pigeons.

Daulton on the other hand is a different kind of pariot altogether: he’s the dope dealer. But that’s a lot closer to the CIA than most folks can ever imagine.

Anyway, he’s in it mostly for the money. But then he’s not very reliable. In fact, if you focus just on his antics alone this would actually be a situation comedy. And a really, really funny one.

Nice soundtrack from Pat Matheny: youtu.be/FBKym8355vk

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falcon_and_the_Snowman
trailer: youtu.be/4N2Iw953cc4

IMDb

[b]Christopher Boyce was released on parole in March 2003. Andrew Daulton Lee was paroled in 1998.

After Andrew Lee’s parole in 1998, Sean Penn hired him as a personal assistant.[/b]

THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN [1985]
Directed by John Schlesinger

RTX executive: You never overheard anybody mentioning Black World projects?
Chris: No, sir.
RTX executive: Know why that is? They don’t exist. At least, not as far as anyone without government clearance is concerned. The Black World is a codename for a family of covert surveillance satellites. Conceived by the Defense Department, manufactured and maintained by RTX, and used primarily by a company you may have heard of in Langley, Virginia.
Chris: Central Intelligence Agency.

Chris becomes part of the military industrial complex.

RTX executive [to Chris]: You’ll be working in the system’s nerve centre. A communications vault linking RTX and our associates in Virginia with tracking stations all around the world. Alaska, Guam, Iceland, Australia, to name a few. You’ll be dealing with correspondence that relates to the activities of the satellites. Correspondence that you will find designated top secret. It’s protected by sophisticated cryptographic equipment developed by the National Security Agency. You’re not to discuss any aspect of yourjob with non-cleared RTX employees. This is as far as I can go. Not with your girlfriend. Not with your parents. Not with your dog. Not in the men’s room, not over lunch. Not in your sleep. Nowhere.

Well, with the possible exception of the USSR.

[b]Chris [reading from the teletype machine]: “Allow union infiltrators sufficient lead time.” Union infiltrators? “Though CIA exposure seems unlikely, standard programme of denial is recommended.” Standard programme of denial recommended?

…

Laurie: Eddie, what do you know about a covert operation in Australia? Chris wants to know.
Chris: Something about labour unions. Air-traffic controllers.
Eddie: It’s nothing. They’re threatening to strike. If they do, it’d stop our personnel and equipment into Pine Gap. Don’t worry. It’s under control.[/b]

Basically, what this involves is the CIA blatantly interferring in the Australian political process in order to to put into power a government more favorable to the interest of the American ruling class. Again, Australia, not some Third World country in Central America.

[b]Chris: Every day I get these misrouted cables–the CIA’s secret mail. Details of covert action that have nothing to do with national security. Manipulations of foreign press, political parties, whole economies. It’s incredible. I had no idea the extent of the lie, the level of deception. Australia’s not our only ally being deceived.
Daulton: Know what I think? You really wanna hurt 'em, really do some damage? Make it public. The New York Times.
Chris: No, no, no. It’s already public! What happened in Chile was public. People still don’t believe we engineered that!

…

Daulton: What’s it worth?
Chris [handing him the envelope with classified information]: How should I know how much it’s worth? Get whatever you can. Haggle with them.
Daulton: What? I just walk in there?
Chris: Yeah. I mean, what are they gonna do - shoot you?
Daulton: They might. You don’t know. You don’t even know the address!
Chris: Hey, there’s one thing. Look at me. Whatever you do, don’t tell them my name. All right? That’s for your own protection. As soon as you tell them my name, they won’t need you any more.
[Daulton looks at him bursting at the seams with uncertainty]
Chris: It’s not too late to back out. Just tell me. [/b]

Off to the Soviet Embassy. Talk about amateur hour!

[b]Daulton [to Soviet Emgassy official Alex]: I got a friend in LA who works for the government. He’s not real crazy about the CIA. The deal is he gets the stuff out, gets it to me. I get it to you. I gotta warn you, this information is quality merchandise - high priority. I expect to be paid premium prices. That’s it. Long and short of it.

…

Daulton [to Alex and his comrade]: I had an idea that might be of interest to you, OK? I know a gentleman in Lima, Peru. You have an embassy or something. This guy can get his hands on heroin. Large amounts of heroin, dirt cheap. It’s a fine product. Here’s the problem. It’s difficult to get this stuff out of South America these days. My idea is this. I arrange a buy. All right? Say 5 kilos to start. Your people bring it up in their diplomatic pouches. I wouldn’t think there’d be any risk in that. We split it 50-50. I get my end into the States. You do what you want with your half. What do you say?[/b]

The look on their faces is utterly pricelss.

Daulton [after having crashed a Soviet Embassy reception]: OK, I swear to God! No money, then that’s it. You’ll never see me again. All right, from now on I do my business with the Chinese. They’ll pay.

That’s when Karpov puts the gun on the table.

[b]Soviet Embassy official: Do you carry a pistol?
Daulton: No.
Soviet Embassy official: Then maybe you should.

…

Daulton: Where are you going?
Chris: It’s over, delivery boy! [/b]

Now it’s spy vs. spy vs. spy.

[b]Alex [handing Chris a list]: You know these people, I assume.
Chris: Most of them.
Alex: Good. What I would like is that you write a little something about each one. Their exact job titles to begin with. Also physical descriptions of each. Height, weight and so on. Their home addresses if you know them. And maybe some details about their families. Drinking habits, religious habits. Sexual deviations and so on.

…

Chris: I’m not a professional like you. This isn’t a career for me. It was impulsive. I never expected it to go on as long as it has. I’m not like you. You have no idea what I’m feeling. You want a mole in the CIA, you find somebody else. I have a life apart from all this, unlike you.
Alex: You know, we waited a very long time to meet you. We have put up with more than anyone should ever have to! You owe us.
Chris: Owe you? Owe you?!
Alex: Christopher, you remember one thing. Impulsively or not, you came to us. We didn’t come to you. And, whether you realise it or not, you are a professional. The moment you accepted money, you became a professional. You can’t leave here tonight free of it all any more than I can. Did you really think you could? It’s not over, Christopher. It’s just beginning.

…

Chris [about the Russians]: I’m gonna be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life. And for what? There’s never gonna be any reconciliation. They’re just as paranoid and dangerous as we are. I can’t imagine why I thought they would be any different. Well, fuck them. I’m gonna get something out of this nightmare. They’re gonna want this and they are gonna pay!
Daulton: The frequencies?

…

Alex [just before he shoves Daulton out of the moving car]: Basura.

…

Daulton [after the Spanish cops torture him]: I’m not a communist! I’m not a cop-killer! I’m telling you the truth! You got the wrong guy! Stop! I’m not an assassin! I’m just a spy!

…

Mexican cop: We’re deporting you. You have your choice of destination.
Daulton: Costa Rica.
Mexican cop: The Soviet Union or the United States?
Daulton: …America.

…

Chris: Lana. The FBI’s gonna come around asking questions. There’ll be all kinds of stories being told. They’ll try to implicate you. There’ll be stories, lies. You won’t know who to believe.
[she looks at him totally bewildered]
Chris: And that’s the look that’ll tell 'em you had nothing to do with it.
Lana: With what?
Chris: I love you…and I always did.

…

Government official: On July 29th, 1974, you signed a security agreement that you would not transmit classified information to any unauthorised person or agency.
Chris: Correct.
Government official: You were told that such a violation could be punishable under Federal Criminal Statutes.
Chris: Correct.
Government official: Have you, in fact, violated that agreement?
Chris: You bet.

…

Government official: Did you remove NSA ciphers from the communications room?
Chris: Ciphers, Pilot TWXs, Argus, Rhyolite data, ground resolution studies, performance sheets. Whatever happened to be lying around that day.

…

Government official: How long have you been an agent for the KGB?
Chris: I’ve never been an agent for the KGB. I work for no one but myself. I’m in no political organisations other than the Democratic Party.
Government official: How much money did you receive?
Chris: Personally, About $20,000. But money’s never been real important to me.
Government official: You referred to CIA activities unrelated to the satellites. Could you be more specific?
Chris: I haven’t mentioned a word about the CIA, but I could be very specific.

…

Government official: Who did you receive your instructions from?
Chris: My conscience.

…

Government official: By turning over US secrets to the Soviet Union you’re putting every man, woman and child here in jeopardy.
Chris: They’re already in jeopardy.

…

Chris [explaining why he didn’t express his unhappiness with the CIA in a more acceptable manner]: It wouldn’t have made a difference. I freely chose my response to this absurd world. If given the opportunity, I would have been more vigorous.[/b]

[iambiguous]

When one is looking for something synonymous with remote don’t be surprised if the first thing that pops into their head is the Outback. Yes, that one. The one in Australia. And out in the Outback, a place as remote as any you are likely to find even there is the Pilbara Desert. Now, imagine being stranded there in a “life and death” situation with someone from a culture [and a frame of mind] that, in its own way, is equally remote from your own. Someone who, in many crucial respects, is “diametrically opposed” to thinking about the world [and reality] as you do?

That’s the starting point here for Sandy Edwards.

She gets stuck out in the middle of the Pilbara Desert with a man who will not allow her to phone for help because his male ego [rooted at least in part in his culture] sees that as a sign of weakness. He caused the problem, he has to fix it. Only after she convinces him that they can LITERALLY DIE OUT THERE does he relent. But by then his phone is dead too.

Only they do finally manage to escape their peril. But that just sets into motion a whole different set of problematic communication. When you escape the very real possibility of death with someone you can begin to feel close to them in a way that would ordinarily never happen. But that doesn’t make the gaps between you just go away.

On the other hand, you can still work through them. You can even make real contact. Until, out of the blue…

Wow. I sure as shit didn’t see that coming. One of those situations that are about as far beyond words as one can imagine.

It’s like suddenly it becomes a whole different movie.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Story
trailer: youtu.be/C7TMfNCZu0w

JAPANESE STORY [2003]
Directed by Sue Brooks

[b]Mother [regarding her scrapbook]: Your job is to put the final clipping in here. Mine. And then it will be complete. And that’s it. A life.
Sandy: It’s sick being that preoccupied with death.
Mother: There’s nothing sick about death. It’s part of life. Your problem is you think it can be avoided. It can’t.

…

Sandy: Let me get this stright. First, he was coming here, and you were doing it. Then we were both gonna do it, and I was just gonna be around as backup. Now he’s not coming here, I’m doing it and you’re not doing it at all.
Baird: Yeah, something like that.
Sandy: I’m not traipsing around the desert with some Japanese prick who wants a glorified tour guide! I’m a geologist! Not a bloody geisha!

…

Tachibana [speaking on the phone in Japanese]: It’s awful. They’ve given me a woman driver. She’s very loud and aggressive…very stubborn.

…

Tachibana: Tomorrow, I will go there.
Sandy: Where?
Tachibana: To where this piece of ore came from.
Mining executive: That’s a bit tricky, mate. We can’t do that.
Tachibana: It is possible?
Execustive: Well, yeah, but it’s a bloody long way. I could arrange it, but you…
Tachibana: Yes! You can arrange it. Thank you. Miss Edwards is driver.
Sandy: I am not going out there! Forget it. It’s just debris and a desert![/b]

She’s going out there.

[b]Tachibana: In Australia you have a lot of space, no people. In Japan, we have many people, no space.
Sandy: Yeah. You ready to go?
Tachibana: There is nothing here. It scares me.

…

Tachibana: Stop. Go back now. We go back now.
Sandy [driving in the desert sand]: No. We can’t.
Tachibana: Why not?
Sandy: You think I can just stop and turn around in this? If you stop, you’re stuck.[/b]

They stop. They get stuck. Thanks to him.

[b]Sandy [looking at the tires buried in loose sand]: Oh, shit…

…

Sandy: Bloody hell! Don’t you know anything?! If you wanna get out of here, get off that phone and do some digging! And I’m really sorry I’m not being very polite, but I’m serious!!

…

Sandy: We’re gonna have to make a dead man.[/b]

That’s this: offroaders.com/tech/Deadman-Anchor.htm
Only it doesn’t work.

[b]Sandy: Hiromitsu, can I use the phone?
Tachibana: One more time. Try again. I clear more, and I push harder. You drive stronger. More acceleration.
Sandy: I don’t think that’s going to work. It’s bogged! It’s up to the axles. The winch is burnt out. It’s not gonna get unbogged. We need to get help.
Tachibana: No. No help. I can fix.
Sandy: Hiromitsu. I don’t think this is gonna work. People die out in this country. Often. Lots of people, all the time. You can die of dehydration and heat exhaustion in no time at all. Nobody will look for us out here. Can I just ring and tell somebody where we are?
Tachibana: No problem. I am fixing it.
Sandy: Look, I won’t say we’re stuck, okay? I’ll just say where we are…and that’s it, okay? Nothing about being stuck.

…

Tachibana: I will walk back and find someone. How far have we come?
Sandy: No. One thing about the Australian desert. Never leave your car.
Tachibana: How far have we come?
Sandy: I don’t know, 50 kilometers.
Tachibana: Twelve hours’ walk. No problem.
Sandy: Oh, for God’s sake!

…

Sandy: You know what else? It’s gonna get cold. Really cold.

…

Sandy [after they free themselves from the bog]: What is this “hai”?
Tachibana: Yeah, “hai.”
Sandy: I mean, what does that mean?
Tachibana: It means "yes. " But not “yes” like in English. It means, "I am listening. Go on. Yes. " Hai is also "what. " Hai is also "I don’t know. " Can be just thinking. And sometimes…it means “no.” But no one says no. Just hai, which means “yes.”
Sandy: Even if they mean no?
Tachibana: Hai.

…

Tachibana: In the desert…I was wrong. It is very bad to make so many mistakes. So I must fix them myself. I’m sorry.

…

Man [in the boat they rented]: In the war, we thought you blokes were coming after us. We had stuff stashed away up in the hills. Evacuation plans. People tying knives to the ends of broomsticks. Ridiculous, really. Now you blokes own the place. There was a time there when nobody would buy anything made in Japan. The wife would shop, turn the thing over. If it said “made in Japan” she’d put it back on the shelf, wouldn’t buy it. Still don’t, I guess. Only country to have a trading surplus with you lot. Funny thing, life, isn’t it?[/b]

The look on his face is, well, inscrutable.

Sandy: Do you love your wife?
Tachibana: No need to say it. When you say it…then, not so true.

The same old story: Can’t be with the one you love? Love vthe one you’re with. But then…

Sandy: No, no, no, no, no, no! Hiro? Hiro? Hiro? Oh, God! Oh, no! Hiromitsu! Oh, God. Hiro! Oh, my God. Oh, Hiromitsu. Oh, no! Oh, Hiromitsu! Hiromitsu! Oh, God!

At first you think it’s just a prank. But, no, he is actually dead.

[b]Sandy: Have you got a hospital here?
Gas station attendent: Yep, but it’s shut. Been shut for about three years now.
Sandy: What about an undertaker?

…

Mother: Think of his wife and family. Imagine what she’s going through. Maybe I should send her a card. Have you got an address I can send it to? Sandy? The poor woman’s probably beside herself.
Sandy: You can’t do that.
Mother: Why not?
Sandy: You can’t send a condolence card to a complete stranger. You don’t know her. You don’t know her culture. You know nothing about her or her marriage!
Mother: I know she was married to him. I know she’s probably sad. I don’t have to be Japanese to know that for heaven’s sake. I’ve been a wife and a widow. Some things are the same all over.
Sandy: Oh, that’s bullshit, Mum!

…

Sandy: “The incident,” they’re calling it. The incident! I mean, even the photos, at least get them back.
Baird: I can hardly go and demand the photos back.
Sandy: Why not?
Baird: It’s rolls of undeveloped film. She might not get them developed. Surely, she’s entitled to a few photographs of the last days of her husband’s life. Christ! What the hell were you doing out there anyway?!![/b]

Only she does get the photos developed. And, afterwards, she has a pretty good guess regarding what they were doing out there.

From Tachibana’s letter: “Dear Sandy: By the time you read this letter I will be on the plane going home to my wife and children. I am sorry you have to read my funny writing. I hope you are well and happy. Now I can be good husband, good father, good man. But today I stand in the desert. The sky is so big so blue. There is so much space and my heart is open.”

[iambiguous]

Gorillas. What do we owe to them? For example, are we morally obligated to do whatever is necessary to take them off of the endangered species list?

Here is one such list: list25.com/25-most-endangered-species-on-earth/

The mountain gorrillas were #23 as of 2013. And yet given how close they are to the human species [re the evolution of life on earth] many think of them ever and always at #1.

On the other hand, if, in the near future, the last of the gorillas were to die off, how many of us would really care? And, as with so much else, each and every one of us would have our own unique reaction to such an event. And it would seem to be futile to discuss how we are morally obligated to react.

But then for reasons rooted in the particular trajectory of the lives that some live, they have become utterly passionate about just such an obligation. And Dian Fossey was right at the top of that list.

Of course there is that gap between what she had expected to unfold once she reached her destination in Africa and what did unfold instead. The part about the civil war, for example. Or the Batwa. Or the zoo broker. I mean, did she have balls or what? And, unlike those before her, she made actual physical contact with the gorillas. She interacted with them…not just count them or observe them.

On December 26th, 1985, Dian Fossey was murdered [assassinated] in the Volcanos National Park in Rwanda.

There is still controversy surrounding her death: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey#Death

IMDb

The gorilla suits used in movies up to this time had obvious anatomical differences from real gorillas; for instance, the wearer’s real eyes were seen, forcing modification to the face. For this film director Michael Apted wanted to use real gorillas where possible, but some shots would have to use gorilla suits, so the difference would show. ‘Rick Baker’ met the challenge and created gorilla suits good enough that Apted could do what he wanted.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_in_the_Mist
trailer: youtu.be/teHNaI8houQ

GORILLAS IN THE MIST [1988]
Directed by Michael Apted

[b]Dr. Leakey [giving a lecture in 1966]: The mountain gorillas greatly outran monkeys in intelligence. But the study of the mountain gorilla has virtually ceased. George Schaller’s pioneering study in 1960 told us that this, the largest of all the primates, is in danger of extinction. His census showed there were fewer than 500 left. God knows how many we’ve lost since then to the poachers who invade the forests.

…

Dr. Leakey: Finally, I am always being asked, “Why have you spent your life looking for something buried in the past for almost two million years?” I suppose the only answer I can give either you or myself is simply this: I want to know who I am and what it was that made me that way.

…

Dr. Leakey: Miss Fossey, I know you are sincere, but just liking animals isn’t enough.
Dian: You just said in there that you need someone right now to take a census of the mountain gorillas. What about me? I can count. 1, 2, 3…
Dr. Leakey: Do you really think you can do it…roughing it in Africa for six months.
Dian: Yes.
[he looks skeptical]
Dian [more emphatically]: Yes!
Dr. Leakey: I’ll tell you what…let me think about it.
[he begins to walk away]
Dian: How long are you going to think about it? Until all of the gorillas are gone? Dr Leakey, you need me me. And I want this job. Give me this chance.

…

Dian [after some of the propective porters walk off]: What is it?
Dr. Leakey: Some of them believe a woman living alone up there has to be mad.
Dian [startled]: Alone?!

…

Dian: You mean we go now?
Dr. Leakey: Yes, to make it by sundown.
Dian: Dr Leakey, I just spent 35 hours on 4 different airplanes. I should at least take a shower.
Dr. Leakey: No one will mind dear.

…

Dr. Leakey: I’ve put something in there for you.
Dian: Thank you, that’s very nice of you. But I think you forgot the rest of my luggage.
Dr. Leakey: No room. They’ll be sent up next fortnight with the rest of the gear.
Dian: Now wait a goddamn minute! I just quit my job, left my fiancé, to say nothing of my appendix and flew halfway around the world. Those cases contain my hairdryer, my makeup, my underwear and my brassieres. If they don’t go, Dr Leakey, I don’t go.[/b]

They go.

[b]Dr. Leakey: Good luck, Dian. I have to go.
Dian [really startled]: You’re not coming with us?!
Dr. Leakey: Of course not. My work’s in Tanzania. Now don’t forget, I like weekly reports, typed. And you are expected to contribute material to the National Geographic. Oh well, I mustn’t miss my plane. Good luck. Have fun!

…

Dian: How big are these night nests?
Sembagare: I don’t know.
Dian: You mean you’ve forgotten.
Sembagare: How can I forget what I never knew.
Dian: Night nests, Sembagare. George Schaller’s book says we count the gorillas’ night nests to get the census.
Sembagare: I don’t know about gorillas.
Dian: Of course you do. You’re a tracker.
Sembagare: Yes, of buffalo, antelope and elephant.
Dian: What? Hey! Hey! That’s great. That’s just great. What the hell have you been doing for the last five hours?
Sembagare: I’ve been waiting for you to show me.

…

Dian [to Sembagare but more to herself]: Maybe I’m just not any goddamn good at this. Six whole weeks and I’ve yet to see a single goddman gorilla![/b]

Then:

[b]Dian: Shit, shit…I fell in shit! Oh…oh my God. It’s gorilla spoor!
Sembagare: And it’s fresh.
Dian: It certainly is!

…

Sembagare [after they run from a charging gorilla]: What does Schaller’s book say when a gorilla charges?
Dian: It says “Never run”.[/b]

That’s when she runs smack dab into the civil war.

[b]Dian [in a letter to Leakey]: We have been thrown out of the Congo. All of my research has been destroyed. This place is a disaster. Some “little” civil war.

…

Dr Leakey [in a letter after she tells him of her encounter with a silverback male gorilla]: Miss Fossey, that was undoubtedly the most foolhardy, the most harebrained, the most lunatic thing I’ve ever heard of. However, since you seem to have been successful, congratulations. It was an amazing accomplishment. The National Geographic has approved new funding and I have an extension on your work permit.

…

Dian [after their encounter with the Batwa]: What was that all about?
Sembagare: Yoiur hair is the color of fire. They think you are a witch.
Dian: They wouldn’t be the first.

…

Dian: If they want a witch, I’ll give them a witch.

…

Dian: Gorillas get caught in these traps. Goddamn Batwa!
Bob Campbell [National Geographic photographer]: You can’t put all the blame on the Batwa. They’ve been feeding their families like this for generations. If you want to blame someone, blame the doctor in Miami. He’s the one who hired the bloke that hired the Batwa. The Batwa get to feed their kids, the middleman gets and silk shirt and the doctor gets a gorilla-hand ashtray for his coffee table. And a great big gorilla head for his wall. And have you ever been to a doctor’s office that didn’t have copies of National Gerographic in the waiting room?[/b]

Oh yeah, that part. The part revolving around supply and demand. The heart and the soul of the free enterprise political economy.

[b]Bob: You’re the story. You’re what people are interested in. The gorilla girl.
Dian: It makes me look like some real weirdo.
Bob: Crawling around the mud in this climate after a bunch of gorillas might be perceived as weird.
Dian: Do you think I’m weird?
Bob: I do. Absolutely. Without question. I also think you are wonderful.

…

Dian [after an aggressive display from a silverback male]: Act submissive.
Bob: I’ve never been so submissive in my life.

…

Dian: This baby gorilla has been sold to a zoo broker.
Mukara [from the Rwandan department of interior]: Yes, I know. I sold it.
Dian: Why?!
Mukara: Money. Lots of it.

…

Mukara: Your problem is decreasing gorillas, mine is increasing people. We’re on opposite sides of the same problem. That kind of money provides people with food, clothing, shoes, medicine. Necessities. Do you want to compare priorities, Miss Fossey?
Dian: The Virungas are supposed to be protected parks land. Where’s the protection?
Mukara: Protection is expensive.
Dian: That’s your problem. Make new laws, raise taxes, but give my gorillas the protection they are entitled to.
Mukara: Your gorillas? As I recall Miss Fossey, you’re a visitor on a yearly renewable work permit. Now I don’t believe that status entittled you to make government policy.[/b]

So, they…work things out.

Student [after Dian “hangs” the Batwa who killed Digit]: How could you do that? I don’t care what that man did. This isn’t your own private kingdom. That was sick.
[Dian grabs him and takes him over to Digit - less his hands and head]
Dian: Am I sick? Am I a murderer? This won’t stop until those butchers are stopped!!

In other words, here the Batwa are the terrorists and Dian is Dick Cheney.

[b]Dian: Nice ring, Van Vecten. Zoo sale profits?
Van Veeten: Miss Fossey, where did you see your first wild animal? In a zoo, wasn’t it?
Dian: You like this ring? You wanna keep the hand it’s on? If I see or hear or smell you anywhere near my gorillas you’ll be writing with your other hand, and I’ll have a new ashtray.
Van Veeten: You are mad.
Dian: Yes I am mad. I am crazy.
Van Veeten: You go too far. Don’t push me.
Dian [as he drives away]: I’LL PUSH YOU OFF THE EARTH, YOU MURDERER!!

…

Sembagare: Mukara was here this afternoon. He is very angry with you. He says you are telling people there’s typhoid on the mountain. The government needs money from the tourists. They get very mad if you scare these people away. Mukara also said last week you shot a tourist in the meadow.
Dian: Now, that is not true. I shot way over their heads. They are not going to turn this mountain…into a goddamn zoo! [/b]

So they kill her.

[iambiguous]

Before, one way. After, another way.

Then it just depends on what actually happens and how wide the gap actually becomes.

For me it will always be before and after Vietnam. But it can be almost anything, right? I’m sure you have your own rendition. It’s just that [philosophically] we tend to think about the implications of it differently.

And it becomes all the trickier if you are still “a kid” when it happens. There’s just something about living a more or less care-free life as an 11 year old and then stumbling upon the sort of violence that Skunk does. She gets drawn into this whole other world – one that catapults her own world into a whole different perspective.

And then on top of all that she has type one diabetes. And now her levels are off.

Then there is Mr. Oswald. He is the one who inflicted the brutal beating on Rick – a “strange” boy from the neighborhood. Rick is mentally afflicted and simply sees the world from a very different point of view. But how exactly? Oswald, on the other hand, is more or less a typical working class brute. At least from time to time. But then his wife just died and he struggles to raise his three daughters on his own. In other words, from time to time, he takes out all the shit that is dumped on him by others on his family. Only this time he sets into motion a string of events that have dire consequences for many.

Just one particular snapshot of one particuar set of relationships in one particular context in one particular place and time.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_(2012_film
trailer: youtu.be/U8AmM54kf1M

BROKEN [2012]

Brother: Why is it Rick they arrest?
Skunk: I don’t know.

Here’s why:

Oswald [holding up an empty condom packet]: What the fuck is this? Who have you been having sex with?
Susan: I haven’t! I didn’t even know what it was!
Oswald: Oh, don’t give me that bullshit. Where did you get it?
Susan: I stole it.
Oswald: Bullshit. Stole it from who? Didn’t I teach you to keep your fucking legs shut. Give me his name. Give me his fucking name!
[He grabs the television, holds it up and threatens to smash it to bits. His daughters are screeching for him not to]
Susan: Rick. Rick Buckley.
Oswald: Rick Buckley? He forced himself on you, didn’t he? Jesus Christ. The animal.
Daughter: Dad…
Oswald: The dirty, retarded fucking animal!

That’s how this things can happen, right? Rick is arrested for a rape that never happened. It was just a scared young girl trying to keep Dad from smashing the telly to bits:

Nurse: Your daughter has not been raped.
Oswald: What the fuck are you talking about?
Nurse: Your daughter’s a virgin, Mr Oswald. She’s never had intercourse.
Oswald: 'Course she fucking has! She’s…
Susan: Dad. Dad, she’s right. It never happened.
Oswald: Susan…
Susan: I only said it did because you wouldn’t believe what I told you and I didn’t want you to smash up the telly.

But then Skunk can’t “unsee” the savage beating that Oswald inflicted on Rick.

[b]Cop: Do you want to press charges, Mr Buckley, against Mr Oswald?
Rick: I just want to go home.

…

Dave [Rick’s father]: He won’t come out of his bedroom, Archie. Janet sits outside his door all day trying to talk to him, and nothing. I’m sorry to drop in on you like this, out of the blue, but I just…You know, I just thought…I thought, “Well, Archie, he’s a… a solicitor and…”
Archie: So you want…you want to take this matter further? You want to make this a legal matter?
Dave: Bloody legal action? No, no, no. Forget it. Uh…I don’t want anything more to do with the bastard.
Archie: Why not?
Dave: Because I’m scared of him. I’m just really bloody scared of him.

…

Archie: Well, what I wanted to ask you was, uh…if you could ask your girls to give the Buckleys a break. They’ve been having a tough time of it lately.
Oswald: Have they? That’s really awful. When was the last time you cried, Archie?
Archie: Cried? I don’t know. Why?
Oswald: 'Cause the next time you will is the next time that you criticise my girls… No, hang on…in any fucking way whatsoever, all right? They’re out of bounds. And if Buckley can’t take a little friendly fucking ribbing, then he’s more of a pathetic prick than I thought he was. Now, I’m having my dinner, mate, so if you don’t mind fucking off.[/b]

You know that kind, don’t you? Or you certainly would if you grew up in the belly of the woking class beast.

[b]Skunk [about Rick being taken to a mental hospital]: What’s it like?
Mike [her teacher]: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Skunk: Is it like ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?’ They cut a part of his brain out.
Mike: Who?
Skunk: McMurphy.

…

Kasia: I’m off to bed.
Archie: All right then.
Kasia: Good night.
Archie: Good night.
Kasia: You can follow me up if you want.

…

Mike: Um, how is Kasia?
Skunk: Kasia’s fine.
Mike: Will you, um, say hi to her for me?[/b]

Later:

[b]Mike: Do you have a message back?
Skunk: I do. Dick.
Mike: Excuse me?
Kasia: It’s what she said.

…

Skunk: What would you do if I died, Dad?
Archie: I can’t even answer that question.
Skunk: Would you cry?
Archie: Uh-huh.
Skunk: A lot?
Archie: I don’t think I’d ever stop.

…

Skunk: What was it like?
Rick: Hmm?
Skunk: You know, when you went kind of mad? Is it all right if I say that?
Rick: Actually, it’s really hard to describe. But it’s kind of like there was a toxic cloud…a mist of evil or something. Or badness.
Skunk: Is it there right now?
Rick: Uh… Less.

…

Skunk: Are you going to marry Kasia?
Archie: I don’t know.
Skunk: Are you?
Archie: I don’t know, love.
Skunk: Because she’ll leave us the way she left Mike. Like Mum left us. Like everyone does. It’ll all go wrong, Dad. Everything always goes wrong. Why do only bad things happen?
Archie: Good things happen.
Skunk: Like what, your sex with Kasia?!

…

Rick [to Skunk who is going into hypoglycemic shock, after he has killed his mother and knocked out his father]: Don’t be scared. I just want your goodness. I just want your goodness. I just want your goodness. I just want your goodness.[/b]

And then the ironies of all ironies: Mr Oswald to the rescue.

[iambiguous]

It all revolves around this:

[b]Title card: In 1917, the Romanov dynasty rulers of Imperial Russia were overthrown by revolution. Some of the nobility and their followers fled to safety but the Tzar, his wife and children were imprisoned and then shot in 1918.

Shortly after, there were strange whispers that one of the family had escaped and was still alive. In the weeks, months, years that followed, the whispers grew louder and louder.

And then a woman appeared, a woman who was said to be the youngest daughter of the last Tzar, her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess Anastasia.[/b]

The fact is that, over the years, many claimed to be Anastasia. And, as noted below, it was only with the invention of DNA analyses that it was finally determined she had in fact been buried with 8 of her other family members. As for the two children who were missing, here is one account: plosone.org/article/info%3Ad … ne.0004838

Anyway, then as now, it’s all about the money. So, if General Bounine can make a ton of it [ten million pounds!] by convincing the world he has discovered the long lost Grand Duchess, why not? The public will be enthralled [or at least entertained] and it can distract them from the general misery of their day to day existence. Just as does our own “celebrity culture” today. It’s really basically just the same thing.

But then…

What if she really is the Grand Duchess? After all, she has amnesia. So, even she does not know for sure. And what happens when the con man himself starts to wonder if she might actually be the real thing? Or if being the real thing is rather contemptuous.

Also, on a certain level this is also about the nature of identity. In particular of the amnesiac. She is being schooled to be someone else but she has no real existential “I” with which to compare that to.

Look for Lovey Howell. And all the rest of her aristocratic ilk. In fact, if aristocracies fill you with contempt avoid this film like the plague. There is absolutely no political context at all. Just vague hints that the world might be better off without them.

IMDb

[b]When the remains of the Romanov family were discovered at Ekaterinburg in 1991, only nine of the 11 bodies were found–the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother, Czarevich Aleksey Nikolaeyvitch Romanov, remained missing, further clouding the question of her fate. However, it was announced that the DNA and other forensic evidence from the remains determined that Anastasia was indeed among the nine bodies that were unearthed from the pit in the forest outside of Ekaterinburg, and that the missing bodies were those of Alexei and one of his other sisters, the Grand Duchess Marie. After all examinations were completed, the remains of the nine individuals were transferred to St. Petersburg and ceremoniously interred at the Fortress Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. The two remaining bodies were believed to have been discovered in 2007 and are fairly certain to be those of the Czarevich Aleksey and the Grand Duchess Marie. When all examinations are completed and the results are announced, those remains, too, will be transferred to St. Petersburg for burial with the other members of the family.

This movie was based on the story of Anna Anderson, a woman who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. It was later discovered that, in fact, she was not who she claimed to be; the mystery was solved through DNA examination of a small piece of tissue cut from Anna in an operation years before.

At the time of filming, the filmmakers were not aware that the real Anna Anderson was still alive. When this came to their attention, they flew straight to her home in Germany and asked permission to use her name.

Anna Anderson’s handwriting was pronounced identical with Anastasia’s and medical experts found 17 points of similarity between her ear and the real Anastasia’s. However, after her death it was discovered that her DNA did not match of England’s Prince Philip, a blood relative of the Romanovs.

In reality, Anna Anderson never met the Dowager Empress, Czarina Maria Fyodorovna. The Empress believed that her son and his family had survived and were still in Russia. Grand Duchess Olga, the younger daughter of Maria Fyodorovna, did meet Anna Anderson while the latter was convalescing in a sanitarium and visited her a few more times before making the determination that something was not right with the ailing woman’s claims. The Grand Duchesses Olga and Xenia did not wish to upset the aged Empress and it is not known if they mentioned Anderson to her at all. The Dowager Empress remained in Denmark until her death in 1928. In 2006 her remains were transferred to St. Petersburg, where she was laid to rest beside her husband, Czar Aleksandr III.

One of the characters mentions the “Mad Monk”. He is referring to Grigory Rasputin, the infamous Siberian monk who worked for a time in the royal court as a healer to Aleksey Nikolaeyvitch Romanov, Tsar Nicholas II’s son and Anastasia’s brother, and was believed to have enormous–and many said undue–influence over the Tsarina Alexandra because of it. His controversial life ended with him being murdered, supposedly by other members of the royal family.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0048947/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia_(1956_film
trailer: youtu.be/8kwqH-HB96A

ANASTASIA [1956]
Directed by Anatole Litvak

[b]Petrovin: But your eyes lit up like those of the mad monk when you heard our tsar’s daughter
might be alive.
Chernov: That was ridiculous. And yours lit up when you heard she had a 10 million inheritance.
Petrovin: Equally ridiculous.
Chernov: Not equally. The 10 million lies waiting in the Bank of England. But the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaevna lies buried in Russia.

…

Chernov [to Petrovin]: My years of banking experience are for nothing, huh? I devised the method of selling shares to stockholders to pay for the search for their beloved grand duchess. I worked out the ratio of so many shares in her inheritance to so many shares of our stock.

…

Chernov: Let’s have your surprise. Where is she? This woman Stepan saw in the asylum in St. Cloud.
Bounine: We have finally tracked her down. Of course, she does not admit that she was there. Nor does she admit that she told a nun there that she was the tsar’s daughter.
Chernov: What does she admit?
Bounine: Nothing. I think she may be lying. But the important thing is that properly used, she may serve our purpose.

…

Bounine: Would you recognize the smile of a girl you knew ten years ago?
Petrovin: I didn’t think of that.
Bounine: You’re both fools! You’re examining her as if she was the real Anastasia. There is no Anastasta! She was shot to death ten years ago by a firing squad. We’re not looking for her, gentlemen. We’re seeking only a reasonable facsimile. [/b]

The long con in other words. The next My Fair Lady.

[b]Chernov: …and that woman is too…too something! Too crazy, too clever, too tricky!
Bounine: I don’t care what she is! The important thing is that she fits!

…

Bounine: Add up the facts, One: She has a certain resemblance, which we can heighten. Two: She’s obviously smart enough to learn what we teach. Discrepancies in her memory can be attributed to the head wound. Three: She has no identity whatsoever. Which means it will be exceedingly difficult for anyone to prove she’s someone else. Four…
Petrovin: We have eight days.
Bounine: Precisely. All in favor of the candidate…two to one, elected.

…

Chernov: Do you realize there are 10 million at stake?
Anastasia: Ten million?!
Chernov: Yes, my dear. The inheritance of 10 million left by the tsar in the Bank of England!
[then he turns to Bounine]
Chernov: And you want to risk it all on a madwoman!

…

Chernov: Now she really thinks she is Anastasia
Anastasia: I do not! I am not.
Bounine: But you can be. I can make you Anastasia.
Anastasia: She is dead. You said so.
Bounine: That doesn’t matter.
Anastasia: Please, please. No one will believe it. The family. They’ll call the lie.
Bounine: No matter, they will accept you. For 10 million, gladly.
Anastasia: They would accept me, and pretend to love me for money? Is that what they are like?
Bounine: Isn’t everyone?

…

Chernov: You think she’s ready?
Bounine [sighs]: No. Of course, she thinks she is.
Chernov: Oh! Listen, she thinks she’s Anastasia! And the great Stanislavski once said, when an actor believes he is the character he’s playing, fire him.
Bounine: It’s a bit late for that.

…

Anastasia: Are you angry because you’re beginning to wonder who I am? Or because you want me to do nothing except what you tell me?
Bounine: I know who you are not, just as I know that unless you do as I tell you I’ll have an extra cigarette girl at my club.

…

Bounine: What are you doing here?
Anastasia [sobbing uncontrollably]: Oh, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I remember, and what I’ve been told I remember. What is real? Am I Anna…Anna. Am I Anna? Why not Tamara, why not Lisa? Why not Tatiana? Yes, why not Tatiana? I can’t anymore. I want to be me, whoever I am. I want to be me! I want someone to tell me, someone to accept me.

…

Bounine: Packing up? And where’s Her Highness going?
Anastasia: I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.
Bounine: I thought you enjoyed yourself today.
Anastasia: Yes, until I became ashamed. Ashamed of allowing myself to be put on display. Ashamed of conjuring up tricks like a circus freak. Ashamed of asking people to sign papers that I’m real. I am real, and I will not stoop to prove it to them.

…

Bounine: Your Majesty…
Dowager Empress: Bounine…I have already been shown two Tatianas, an Alexei, and a Maria as well as an Anastasia. I will not see your client. I am as weary of these spectral grandchildren as I am of false hope. I have lost everything I have loved. My husband, my family, my position, my country. I have nothing but memories. I want to be left alone with them.[/b]

Pity the poor aristocracy!

[b]Dowager Empress [to Anastasia]: I have received too many appeals from resurrected Romanovs. If the firing squads were such poor shots it’s amazing the revolution succeeded.

…

Anastasia: You kept Figgy’s emeralds.
Dowager Empress: How did you learn to call Catherine the Great “Figgy”?
Anastasia: We always called her that. Sometimes we gave the nickname to Maria because she had such an eye for the men. And Olga used to say…
Dowager Empress: Stop! I forbid you to bandy those names.
Anastasia: I can speak of them if I choose. They are my sisters.
Dowager Empress: Impostor!
Anastasia: You call me that!
Dowager Empress: If you have any decency, end this charade at once. I will pay you. I will give you more than whatever Bounine promised you.
Anastasia: Go away!
Dowager Empress: I’m offering you money.
Anastasia: Oh, please go.
Dowager Empress: So, you are giving up.
Anastasia: It wasn’t enough to have suffered the asylum. Some people trying me, using me, rejecting me. And before that, the cellar and the flight!
Dowager Empress: The rescue from the very edge of the grave. Years of lost memory in an asylum…excellent material for melodrama.
Anastasia: Long empty days, in which the consciousness of living came only through pain. Hardly melodrama. And then slowly, finally struggling up…out of the water,into the light…into the air, thinking…“Yes, perhaps yes, I may be…I must be…I am. I am, and my grandmother is still alive to tell me so.”

…

Dowager Empress [holding her]: I thought you were gone, but you have come back, Anastasia. You have come back! But, oh, please, if it should not be you, don’t ever tell me.[/b]

So, Anastasia does convince her that she is indeed the Grand Duchess. But, as noted above, “in reality” Anna Anderson never met the Dowager Empress at all.

Bounine: What bothers me is the way you’ve changed. When we began you wanted to find out who you were. You said that was all you wanted. Now you must be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaevna. Now you must be placed upon a throne before a morgue of royal corpses.
Anastasia: Must you always hate? Must you always ridicule?
Bounine: Ridicule who? Your loyal loving subjects? Those embalmed skeletons? They don’t care about you! They don’t care who is Anastasia, so long as they get money and a better position in a world that is dead and buried, and should be!
Anastasia: You didn’t say that a month ago. Then you wanted it, and you wanted it for me! Well, now I like it.
Bounine: Go on, like it. Be a grand duchess! And make it really royal. Marry a man who wouldn’t come within ten feet of the altar if you were not an heiress!

Be careful what you wish for…

Anastasia [to Paul]: The poor have only one advantage; they know when they are loved for themselves.

[iambiguous]

To the best of my recollection this film was instrumental in sparking my own daughter’s interest in auditioning for [and eventually enrolling in] a school such as this. She attended the Baltimore School For the Arts. If only for a few months. She wanted to be a flutist. But she simply could not master the instructor’s “embouchure” there. So it was back to Friends… where the instructor was satisfied with the one that she already had. Eventually, she sold her flute. She now teaches art at a local community college.

[FYI: Tupac Shakur and Jada Pinkett Smith are alumni of the BSA]

Anyway, fame. Why are so many obsessed with it? And yet in the modern world the more realistic question might be, “why aren’t even more obsessed with it?” Let’s face it, we don’t exactly live in a “village” anymore. In the modern industrial world, the individual becomes increasingly more invisible. We see ourselves in a veritable sea of people. How then do we rise to the surface and gain the recognition of others if not by being “famous”. It has even reached the point now where being famous simply for being famous is good enough. Whatever it takes to rise above the faceless, feckless, nobody masses, right?

Here at least the fame revolves around actual talent. You might even say that these are some of those young people upon whom youth is not wasted. For one thing, they are almost all off the beaten path. Even if intellectually they have never really given much thought to what that might mean. Morally, say. Let alone politically. Alas, even for them, “the 60s” are over.

Art school, of course, isn’t like MIT. Or medical or law school. So much of our reactions to it is subjective. At least with respect to those who might be good or might be great. Those who are bad, on the other hand, are less difficult to spot.

For some it’s always and only about fame itself. And, for others, fame and fortune is incidental to the fulfilment they get in performing.

Then there’s the part about when they are out of school. Unlike most high schools in which the kids basically come from the same neighborhood, here the kids can come from all over the city. So some will come from families that are more or less rich, that are more or less broken.

IMDb

[b]Director Alan Parker wanted a scene that showed Doris overcoming her fear and becoming an actress. He heard of the audience participation at the local screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and went to check it out. He loved it so much that he not only decided to use it in the film, he had many of the “cast” from the local screenings appear in the film, as the people doing the time-warp on stage when Doris runs up and joins them.

The school is based on the real-life Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan. It is a public school, and therefore available to any New York City high school student who successfully auditions.

Original title for the movie was to be “Hot Lunch,” but because an X-rated movie on release at the time had the same title, the production opted for “Fame” instead.[/b]

I still don’t fucking believe that. Great song though: youtu.be/o2iQ8THWz5k

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fame_(1980_film
trailer: youtu.be/vsnQ8p-BVmQ

FAME [1980]
Directed by Alan Parker

[b]Lisa [talking to a black girl during the audition]: I really like your nose ring. Did it hurt, or is that ethnic?

…

Brother: Why can’t he play piccolo? Something sensible. Or the accordion, like Papa did.
Father [Bruno’s dad]: Same reason you drive a checker and not a Roman chariot. It’s progress.

…

Shirley: You don’t need his name. He’s not here for the audition. He’s my partner.
Mrs. Sherwood: What school’s he from?
Shirkey: He ain’t into school. He’s just helping me out with my dancing. But it’s me who’s auditioning. Mulholland, Shirley.
Mrs. Sherwood: He doesn’t go upstairs without filling in his name.
Shirley: Leroy’s his name, but I’m auditioning. Shirley Mulholland. Can we go up now?
Mrs. Sherwood: He’s not going up until he checks his knife.
Shirley: We ain’t staying long enough for no trouble. He’s just helping a friend.
Mrs. Sherwood: He’s not helping out anyone unless he checks his knife![/b]

Bingo: It’s Leroy that get’s admitted.

[b]Shorofsky [after Bruno sets up all of his electronic instruments]: Does he wanna be a musician or an airline pilot?

…

Shorofsky: Mr. Martelli. We are ready when you are. Would you care to begin?
Bruno: Oh, okay. Sure.
[Bruno plays something bizarrely, uh, synthetic]
Shorofsky: Mr. Martelli. Mr. Martelli. Mr. Martelli! Thank you. One instrument at a time will be quite sufficient!
Bruno: I could do it in 4/4 if you prefer a disco beat.

…

Shirley [after Leroy is accepted and she’s dumped]: It’s just not fair. I didn’t wanna come here, anyway. This school sucks. You done me a favour, shithead. You saved me four fuckin’ years from this ass-lickin’ school. You’re lookin’ at one happy lady. Who wants to go to a fuckin’ school to learn to dance, anyway?

…

Mrs. Sherwood: In the future, Mr. Johnson, I’d like you to leave your ghetto blaster at home.
Leroy: I’d have left it home if it wasn’t so goddamn boring in here.
Mrs. Sherwood: This is a classroom, Mr. Johnson. You’re going to be here for four years with your eyes open, homework done, pencils sharpened and all food, cigarettes and radios outside. Do you understand me?
[he sneers]
Mrs. Sherwood: Why are you here, Mr. Johnson?
Leroy: Because I’s young and single - and I loves to mingle.
Mrs. Sherwood: Speak English.
Leroy: I speak like I likes.
Mrs. Sherwood: This is my room. You’ll speak as I like. I teach English. Now, if that’s a foreign language, you’re gonna learn it.
[then to the class]
Mrs. Sherwood: This is no Mickey Mouse school. You won’t get off easy because of talent. I don’t care how well you dance. If you don’t give academic subjects equal time, you’re out.

…

Miss Berg [to the dance class]: You have to take outside classes in your major field and study ballet, modern, folk, jazz, tap and historical dance here as well as dance history, supported adagio variation class, makeup, hairstyling and even acting for dancers.

…

Farrell [to the acting class]: 50,000 people call themselves actors, and maybe 500 are making a living at it. Most of those do commercials to pay the rent. The rest wait tables clean other people’s apartments, living on welfare and hope. Don’t think talent’s enough to get you through. You gotta have a strong technique, a good agent, and most of all, thick skin. Now you’re part of an underprivileged minority, and you’re going to suffer.

…

Shorofsky [to the music class]: You’ll need to learn melodic dictation theory, keyboard harmony, elementary piano, piano literature, music history, orchestration, conducting, symphonic band, dance band, ensembles…

…

Father [to Bruno]: Look, did I build you a studio in the basement for a ghost? Did I spent $7,000 on equipment for a ghost? Does your mama cook and clean and wear old clothes for a ghost? A ghost? Elton John’s mom has got six mink coats!!

…

Bruno: Mr. Shorofsky does not understand any music written past Mozart when he was 2.
Coco: They’re all the same. What do you expect? Graduating from P.A. is no Academy Award. You know what I mean. Look, it is better than real school. It’s free, and you don’t get raped in the hallways. But it’s still small change.

…

Farrell: I want you to observe yourself doing ordinary, everyday things. You’ll be asked to duplicate those here in class. An actor must develop an acute sense memory so concentrate on how you deal with things in your world how you wash your face or hold your fork or lift your cup comb your hair. Observe and study your own mechanicalness. See if you can catch yourself in the very act of doing or saying something. See if your actions and reactions fall into patterns and what those patterns are. And in particular, pay close attention to the physical world. Isolate and concentrate on the details.[/b]

Cut to Ralph in class acting like he is taking a shit.

[b]Shorofsky: No! No! No! Hold the bow like this! Not like that! This isn’t your dick you’re holding! It’s a violin bow! Hold it with respect, like…
Bruno: …Your dick?

…

Farrell: Last year, we worked on simple observations. This year, we’re going to turn that observation inward and work on re-creating emotional states: Fear, joy, sorrow, anger. And it’ll be more difficult because you’ll have to expose more of you what’s on the inside of you. For your first acting exercise this year, I want you to re-create a difficult memory a painful moment when you learned something about yourself that hurt. And I mean really hurt.

…

Shorofsky: Lift the bow off the string, Martelli.
Bruno: Mozart wouldn’t do this today.
Shorofsky: Do what?
Bruno: This bowing business. He’d plug his keyboard into an amp and he’d have string quartets coming out of his fingers.
Shorofsky: And who would play all these science-fiction symphonies?
Bruno: He would. He’d overdub and mix, of course. He wouldn’t make the same old noise.
Shorofsky: Noise?
Bruno: He’d sound electric. He’d have spacier strings and horns and computerized bassoons.
Shorofsky: One man is not an orchestra.
Bruno: Who needs orchestras? You can do it all with a keyboard, an amp and enough power.
Shorofsky: You’re going to play all by yourself?
Bruno: You don’t need anybody else.
Shorofsky: That’s not music, Martelli. That’s masturbation.

…

Doris: Well, I mean, everybody falls in love with their analyst. There’s a word for that, isn’t there?
Montgomery: Yeah. Homosexual.

…

Montgomery: It’s funny. “Gay” used to mean such a happy kind of word once. Not that it bothers me. I’m pretty well-adjusted, really. Never being happy isn’t the same as being unhappy. Is it?

…

Ralph [in acting class]: And there was this guy on the TV. And he was talking about Freddie. He…He said that…He said that Freddie Prinze put a gun to his head and he killed himself. You know, it was an accident, man. Shit, I mean, he was fucking around. He was very gifted. You always laughed at him because he was very fucking talented. And sometimes you didn’t even wanna laugh at him and you laughed at him anyway. But those motherfuckers they had to say that he was depressed and he was suicidal, and that he was fucked up. They wanted his fucking ass, man. They wanted to nail his ass. Because he didn’t think living was such a happy trip, you know? We can’t have happy people walking on this planet. Everybody’s gotta be so goddamn serious. Everyone’s gotta stay in business and suffer so the witch doctors and the deodorant-spray people and plastic surgeons could stay in business. And we can all go fucking pray to the asshole God up there that fucked it up in the first place![/b]

On the other hand, Prinze’s death was contoroversial: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Prinze#Death

[b]Coco [fighting with Hilary over Leroy]: You know what they say? The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.
Hilary: Yes, but who wants diabetes?

…

Hilary [to Leroy]: You’ll meet my stepmother, Claudia. Trainee witch. No cracks about being Chinese. She’s had her eyes fixed. She recuperated in Palm Springs, where she had her purse stolen. She lost all her credit cards. Dad doesn’t want to report it, though. The thief is spending less than she did.

…

Ralph [in church after his sister was attacked abd beaten up by some “creep”]: Did you call a doctor?
Priest: I don’t think she’s hurt.
Ralph: Since when are you in the thinking business?
Priest: She’s just frightened.
Ralph: She’s fucking 5 years old!
Priest: Please keep your voice down. You’re in a church, my son.
Ralph: Yeah? And you’re in the fucking Dark Ages!
Mother: Silencio!
Ralph: You kiss my ass, Padre.
[he turns to his mother]
Ralph: She needs a doctor! A doctor man! Not the goddamn Holy Ghost!

…

Doris: I mean, if I don’t have a personality of my own, so what? I’m an actress! I can put on as many personalities as I want!
Montgomery [raises his glass]: To schizophrenia!
Doris [also raising glass]: Abso-fucking-lutely!

…

Hilary: You see, I was offered this place in the San Francisco Ballet. I haven’t told anyone yet, but I’m gonna take it. I don’t care what they think. I’m a good dancer. Better than good. Maybe even the best in the school. And that’s not conceit, it’s just simple honesty. If I stay in New York, everyone will think I bought my way into ABT. And I’m not starving myself for Balanchine’s City Ballet. Not that I mind doing the corps de ballet bullshit. I’d sooner do it out of town. I’ll pay my dues on the west coast, come back to New York a star. You see, I’ve always had this crazy dream of dancing all the classical roles before I’m twenty-one. I want Giselles and CoppÈlias coming out of my feet. And Sleeping Beauties, and the Swan. I want bravos in Stuttgart and Leningrad and Paris. Maybe even a ballet created especially for me. You see? There’s no room for a baby.
Nurse: Will this be Master Charge or American Express, honey?

…

Francoise: Listen, Coco, my name is François. Francois Lafete. I’m doing this picture down in the south of France, you know? I was wondering if maybe you’d like to do a screen test for me.

…

Leroy: Alvin Ailey wants me to join his company.
Mrs Sherwood [at the hospital where her husband is very sick]: I’m sorry, Leroy, but I don’t think this is the time–
Leroy: I can’t if you flunk me out. I have to pass.
Mrs Sherwood You should’ve thought of it four years ago.
Leroy: Where I come from it don’t pay to read and speak white.
Mrs Sherwood: Don’t lecture me, Leroy.
Leroy: Maybe I didn’t say it right, but you been down hard on me since day one.
Mrs Sherwood: Whatever you say, Leroy. Go home.
Leroy: I stopped going home! You never knew that, did you? You make a big deal about pulling us out of the gutter, yet you won’t eat with us. You know where that leaves people like me? Nowhere!
Mrs Sherwood: This isn’t the time. I don’t wanna hear it.
Leroy: You’re going to hear it! I’m gonna be a good dancer!
Mrs Sherwood: Just get out of here, please!
Leroy: You will not keep me down because I can’t read stories!
Mrs. Sherwood in tears]: Don’t you think of anyone but yourself?!!

…

Francoise: Could you take your top off, please?
Coco [startled]: What?
Francoise: Could you take your blouse off?
Coco: Are you kidding?
Francoise: No, I’m not kidding. What’s the matter? You’re acting like some dumb kid. I thought you were a professional.
Coco: I am.
Francoise: Well, then what’s the problem? I can’t.
[she takes her blouse off – in tears]
Francoise: That’s better. That’s lovely. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Could you arch your back? Arch your back a little, Coco. Smile for me, Coco. Come on, Coco. Smile, smile. Smile for me. Now take your thumb and put it in your mouth Iike a little schoolgirl. [/b]