The truth not only can be adjusted, it is done all the time. And you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that. You just have to be a capitalist. It’s the nature of the beast. The bottom line. It’s only a matter of how you rationalize it. If you bother with that at all.
And ironically the biggest scams revolve not around crooks like these but around the things that are all perfectly legal.
So, every now and then another one of these big corporate scandals – Hooker Chemical, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Exxon, Shell – hits the front page. But nothing really changes. Not systemically. It all just becomes absorbed in the best of all possible worlds that it’s claimed to be.
Would that “real life” could have an ending like this one.
Michael Clayton [2007]
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy
[b]Arthur: Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go to work… all I’m saying is wait, just wait, just-just-just… please hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it’s… I’m begging you Michael. I’m begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building, okay, I’m running across Sixth Avenue, there’s a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I’m dictating. There’s this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I… I-I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… like a… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve-I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the… the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now.
…
Michael: Mr. Greer, you left the scene of an accident on a slow week night, six miles from a state police barracks. Believe me. If there’s a line, you’re right up front.
Mr. Greer: I can get a lawyer any time I want. I don’t need you for that. We’re not sitting here for forty five minutes for a god damned referral.
Michael: I don’t know what Walter promised you but…
Mr. Greer: A miracle worker. That’s Walter on the phone twenty minutes ago. Direct quote, okay, “Hang tight, I’m sending you a miracle worker.”
Michael: Well, he misspoke.
…
Mr. Greer [pointing to the ringing phone]: That’s the police, isn’t it?
Michael: No. They don’t call.
…
Michael: What can I tell you? Don’t piss off a motivated stripper.
…
Arthur: Six years, Michael. Six years I’ve absorbed this poison. Four hundred depositions, a hundred motions, five changes of venue…85,000 documents in discovery. Six years of scheming and stalling and screaming, and what have I got? I’ve spent 12 percent of my life defending the reputation of a deadly weed killer!
…
Karen: This is totally unacceptable. This is a 3-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit. In the morning, I have to call my board. I have to tell them that the architect of our entire defense has been arrested for running naked in a snowstorm, chasing the plaintiffs through a parking lot.
Michael: I understand.
Karen: What sickness is he talking about?
Michael: I don’t know. It could be a number of things.
Karen: Well, give me one.
Michael: Frostbite.
Karen [shocked]: You think this is funny!
…
Marty: We’ve got 600 attorneys here. We’ve got to find out who’s an expert on psychiatric commitment statutes.
Michael: I can tell you who that is: Arthur.
…
Arthur [on the phone with Anna Kaiserson]: Isn’t it what we wait for? To meet someone… and they’re, they’re like a lens and suddenly you’re looking through them and everything changes and nothing can ever be the same again.
…
Gabe [regarding Michael’s gambling debts]: Do everyone a favor. Get out the treasure map and start digging. You got a week.
…
Arthur: Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you’re a bag man not an attorney. If your intention was to have me committed you should have kept me in Wisconsin where the arrest report, the videotape, eyewitness reports of my inappropriate behavior would have had jurisdictional relevance. I have no criminal record in the state of New York, and the single determining criterion for involuntary commitment is danger. Is the defendant a danger to himself or to others. You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and God bless, but I’ll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.
Michael: I’m not the enemy.
Arthur: Then who are you?
…
Authur: Yes! Here we are, all together. Is everyone listening? 'Cause this is the moment you’ve been waiting for, a very special piece of paper, so let’s have a big, paranoid, malignant round of applause… for United Northfield Culcitate Internal Research Memorandum #229! June 19th, 1991. “Conclusion: The unanticipated marketing growth for Culcitate by small farms in colder climates demands IMMEDIATE cost-benefit analysis.” Hah. Would you like a little bit of legal advice? NEVER let a scientist use the words “unanticipated” and “immediate” in the same sentence. Okay? Okay. “In-house field studies have indicated small, short-season farms dependent on well water for human consumption are at risk for toxic, particulate concentrations at levels significant enough to cause serious human tissue damage.” Well, this is a long way of saying that you don’t even have to leave your house to be killed by our product, we’ll pipe it into your kitchen sink. “Culcitate’s great market advantage that it is tasteless, colorless, and does not precipitate, has the potential to mask and intensify these potentially lethal exposures.” Now, I love this. Not only is this a great product, it is a superb cancer delivery system. “Chemical modifications of Culcitate product, or the addition of a detector molecule such as an odorant or a colorant, would require a top-down redesign of the Culcitate-manufacturing process. These costs, while assumed to be significant, were not summarized here.” Which, loosely translated, means “it’s going to cost a fortune to go back on this, and I’m just an asshole in a lab, so could someone else PLEASE make the decision?” “CLEARLY, the release of these internal research documents would compromise the effective marketing of Culcitate, and MUST be kept within the protective confines of United Northfield’s trade secret language.” You don’t need me… to tell you what that means. Goodbye!
…
Karen: Okay.
Wet Man: Is that, “Okay, you understand,” or “Okay, proceed”?
…
Michael: What if Arthur was onto something?
Marty: What do you mean? Onto what?
Michael: U North. What if he wasn’t crazy, what if he was right?
Marty: Right about what? We’re on the wrong side?
Michael: Wrong side, wrong way. Anything. All of it.
Marty: This is news? This case reeked from day one. Fifteen years in I gotta tell you how we pay the rent?
Michael: But what would they do, what would they do if he went public?
Marty: What would they do? Are you fucking soft? They’re doing it! We don’t straighten this settlement out in the next twenty four hours, they’re gonna withhold nine million dollars in fees. Then they’re gonna pull out the video of Arthur doing his flashdance in Milwaukee, they’re gonna sue us for legal malpractice. Except there won’t be anything for them to win, because by then the merger with London will be dead and we’ll be selling off the goddamn furniture!
[hands Michael an envelope]
Marty: That’s eighty. We’re calling it a bonus. You’ve got a three year contract, that’s your current numbers, that’s assuming this all works out.
…
Michael [to Karen]: I’m not the guy that you kill. I’m the guy that you buy. Are you so fucking blind you don’t even see what I am? I’m the easiest part of your whole goddamn problem and you’re gonna kill me? Don’t you know who I am? I’m a fixer. I’m a bagman. I do everything from shoplifting housewives to bent congressmen…and you’re gonna kill me?
…
Karen: Five is easier. Yeah, 5 is something that we could talk about.
Michael: Good. And then the other 5 is to forget about the 468 people that you knocked off with your weed killer.
Karen: I’ll talk to…
Michael: Do I look like I’m negotiating?
…
Michael: You’re so fucked. Here let me get a picture while I’m at it.
Karen: You don’t want the money?
Michael: Keep the money. You’ll need it.
Don: Is this fellow bothering you?
Michael: Am I bothering you?
Don: Karen, I’ve got a board waiting in there. What the hell’s going on? Who are you?
Michael: I’m Shiva, the God of death.
…
Taxi driver: So what are we doin’?
Michael: Give me fifty dollars worth. Just drive.[/b]