philosophy in film

Steve Jobs. You might have heard of him. He was a founder of a corporation called Apple. You might have heard of that too.

Your Apple though, not mine.

My Apple was founded by the Beatles. Apple Corps. And back then it was argued [idealistically] that the point of it was to establish a new environment for creating a new music – one that went beyond the “business as usual” model that invariably revolved solely around making a buck.

Your Apple however is more about the creation of a company that revolves around inventing the technology that we use to communicate any and all content. In fact, the content is basically beside the point. Or, perhaps, to put it another way, it is content that is clearly in sync with our new Holy Trinity: consumption, pop culture and celebrity.

But who was Steve Jobs? And how did he become the man that we think we know he was?

That is basically why films like this are made. We know generally who he was but few of us have any really clear understanding of what actually lies below the surface. Many of course use his computer technology. And many are aware of just how instrumental he was in regard to creating the modern world that we live in today.

But: What about all the rest?

Actually though this is not really that sort of film at all. We don’t go back to the day he was born. Instead, we focus in on three crucial junctures in his adult life. The rest we sort of have to figure out for ourselves.

Is there then a teleology here? An ontology? Something that goes beyond a subjective narrative of one particular existential life?

For example: Was he a “good” man more or less than he was a “bad” man? Or, as with all the rest of us lesser mortals, does that depend entirely on who you ask?

Basically, this is the “inside story” of shit that folks like me don’t even really care about. Or care about considerably less than the manner in which identity, conflicting value judgments and political power are far more intriguing to discuss. To discuss in this particular context. But then time and again they cut to the crowds in the hall stamping their feet in anticipation of the next Great Technological Unveiling. As though in the end it really wasn’t just about embracing the next generation of that Holy Trinity.

Either that or [one suspects] the Defense Department.

As for Job’s “personal life” he was generally as fucked up as all the rest of us. Or maybe it was because he was adopted.

As for all the shit that passed back and forth between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, I’m backing Woz. I think.

Of course all of this basically antedates the Smartphone. Not to mention Steve Job’s death.[/b]

IMDb

[b]The three sequences in the film were filmed on 16mm, 35mm, and digital to illustrate the advancement in Apple’s technology across the 16 years depicted of Jobs’ life.

Michael Fassbender said in an interview that Christian Bale who exited the project in November 2014 would have been “perfect” to play Steve Jobs. “I thought to myself: Christian Bale is perfect, why isn’t he doing it?” The actor told The Hollywood Reporter while promoting the film in London. “I actually called him up and told him that myself.”

Several memorable scenes in the movie never happened in real life. Some of these are the scene where Jobs’ little daughter uses his computer to draw a picture, the reconciliation between John Sculley and Jobs, most of the arguments with Steve Wozniak and the final scene between Jobs and his now-grown up daughter. On the other hand, the infamous scene where it’s implied that Jobs splashes his feet in the toilet bowl to calm himself down did actually happen. This was one of Jobs’ infamous quirks and Michael Fassbender himself asked to do it in the movie, since it wasn’t in Sorkin’s script. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/aEr6K1bwIVs

STEVE JOBS [2015]
Directed by Danny Boyle

Arthur C. Clarke [being interviewed on television in front of a room-sized computer]: And with that movie 2001, you’re projecting us into the 21st century. I brought along my son Jonathan who in the year 2001 will be the same age as I am now. Maybe he will be better adjusted to this kind of world that you’re trying to portray. The big difference, when he grows up…In fact, if we wanted to wait till the year 2001… He will have in his own house not a computer as big as this, but at least a console through which he can talk to his friendly local computer and get all the information he needs for his everyday life, like his bank statements, his theater reservations, all the information you need in the course of living in a complex modern society. This will be in a compact form in his own house. He’ll have a television screen, like these here, and a keyboard. And he’ll talk to the computer and get information from it. And he’ll take it as much for granted as we take the telephone.
Reporter: I wonder, though, what sort of a life would it be like in social terms? I mean, if our whole life is built around the computer, do we become a computer-dependent society?
Clarke: In some ways, but they will also enrich our society because it will make it possible for us to live, really, anywhere we like. Any businessman and executive could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through a device like this. And this is a wonderful thing. It means we won’t have to be stuck in cities. We’ll be able to live out in the country or wherever we please.

Again, it is just technology. Which can then be used to sustain any sort of business at all. For example you can run a sweat shop using it. Or facilitate a sex-slave operation.

[b]Steve: We need the computer to say hello.
Andy: You’re not hearing me. It’s not going to say hello.
Steve: Just fix it.
Andy: Fix it?
Steve: Yeah.
Andy: In 40 minutes?
Steve: Fix it.
Andy: I can’t.
Steve: Who’s the person who can?
Andy: I’m the person who can, and I can’t.

…

Steve: Two days ago, we ran a Super Bowl ad that could’ve won the Oscar for Best Short Film. There are more people who can tell you about the ad than can tell you who won the game.
Joanna: I understand, but the ad said the Mac was gonna save the world. It didn’t say it was gonna say hello.

…

Andy: Part of the problem is we can recompile, but if it’s a hardware problem, we can’t get into the back.
Joanna: Why not?
Andy [to Steve] Do you wanna tell her or should I?
Joanna: Why can’t he get into the machine?
Andy: You need special tools.
Joanna: What kind of special tools? Just take a screwdriver.
Andy: He didn’t want users to be able to open it. You need special tools.

…

Steve: The exit signs have to be off or we’re not gonna get a full blackout.
Andrea: We’ve spoken to the building manager and the fire marshal.
Steve: And?
Andrea: They’re absolutely no way they’re letting us turn the exit signs off.
Steve: I’ll pay whatever the fine is.
Andrea: The fine is they’re gonna come in and tell everyone to leave.
Steve: You explained to the fire marshal that we’re in here changing the world.
Andrea: Well…
Steve: Did you?
Andrea: Yes, but unless we can also change the properties of fire, he doesn’t care.
Joanna: Steve…
Steve: If a fire causes a stampede to the unmarked exits, it will have been well worth it for those who survive. For those who don’t, less so, but still pretty good.
Andrea: Listen…
Steve: I need it to go black, real black. Get rid of the exit signs, and don’t let me know how you did it.

…

Joanna: You need special tools to open the Mac?
Steve: You knew it was a closed system.
Joanna: I didn’t know literally. Jesus. And if you keep alienating people for no reason, there’s gonna be no one left for it to say hello to.
Steve: It’s not for no reason. We blow this and IBM will own the next 50 years like a Batman villain. Remember the phone company? That’s what Bell was called, “the phone company.” IBM will be the computer company. Ten years later they’ll be the information company, and that’s very bad for the human race

…

Joanna: We’re not gonna sell a million in the first 90 days.
Steve: Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone is waiting for the Mac.
Joanna: Maybe. But what happens when they find out that for $2,495, there’s nothing you can do with it?

…

Steve: You can complain about memory or you can complain about price, but you can’t do both at the same time. Memory is what costs money…Look at their faces when they see what it is. They won’t know what they’re looking at or why they like it, but they’ll know they want it.

…

Lisa [to Joanna]: My dad named a computer after me.
Steve: I’m not your…Actually, do you know what a coincidence is, Lisa? Like if you met someone. You made a new friend and her name was Lisa too. That would be a coincidence. “Lisa” stands for “Local Integrated Systems Architecture.” L-I-S-A. It’s a coincidence.
Joanna: You about done?

…

Lisa: So it was the other way around. I was named after the computer.
Steve: Nothing was named after anybody. It’s a coincidence.
Joanna [to Lisa]: Come on.

…

Chrissann [reading from Time magazine]: “Jobs insists”… I am quoting… “…twenty-eight percent of the male population of the United States could be the father.”
Steve: I wasn’t saying you’ve slept with 28% of American men. I was using an algorithm based on the blood test which said there was a 94.1% chance that I’m the father.

…

Chrissann: I applied for welfare yesterday.
Steve: I’m sorry?
Chrissann: Hello! I said I applied for welfare yesterday. The Time article said your Apple stock was worth $441 million, and I wanted to ask you how you felt about that.
Steve: Well, I feel like Apple stock has been dramatically undervalued.
Chrissann: Your daughter and her mother…
Steve: Chrisann…
Chrissann: …are on welfare. We’re living in a hovel in Menlo Park. We can’t pay the heating bills. She sleeps in a parka. Your daughter…
Steve: She’s not my daughter!
Chrissann: Because, as reported by Time magazine, I’ve slept with 28% of the men in America?
Steve: No.
Chrissann: All of them, exactly nine months before Lisa was born!![/b]

Even if Lisa isn’t his daughter, the guy here isn’t any less than a complete fucking scumbag here, right?

[b]Andy [back to the “hello” crisis]: We’re not a pit crew at Daytona. This can’t be fixed in seconds.
Steve: You didn’t have seconds, you had three weeks. The universe was created in a third of that time.
Andy: Well, someday you’ll have to tell us how you did it.

…

Steve: Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna announce the names of everyone who designed the launch demo. I’m gonna introduce everyone and ask them to stand up. The bag was designed by Susan Kare. The Macintosh font that’s scrolling across the screen was designed by Steve Capps. The starry night and skywriting was Bruce Horn. MacPaint, MacWrite, Alice, down to the calculator. And then I’m gonna say the voice demo that didn’t work was designed by Andy Hertzfeld.
Andy: Steve…
Steve: Five-in-six is your chance of surviving the first round of Russian roulette, and you’ve reversed those odds. So unless you wanna be disgraced in front of your friends, family, colleagues, stockholders and the press, I wouldn’t stand here arguing. I’d go try and get some more bullets out of the gun. Do it, Andy!

…

Steve: Woz wants me to acknowledge the Apple II team.
Joanna: You must be able to see that she looks like you.

…

Steve [to Joanna about the Mac launch]: The two most significant events of the twentieth century: the Allies win the war, and this.

…

Steve: The test said I…
Joanna: I don’t care what the test said. I don’t care about 94.1% or the insane algorithm you used to get to 28% of American men.
Steve: I’m buying her a new house. I’m giving her money.
Joanna: There’s a small girl who believes you’re her father. That’s all. That’s all the math there is. She believes it. What are you gonna do about that?
Steve: God sent his only son on a suicide mission, but we like him anyway because he made trees.[/b]

Ego and money. Isn’t that basically what he is all about? Well, up to this point.

[b]Woz: The slots are what allowed the Apple II to run, for just one example, VisiCalc, which from my guess single-handedly sold between 200,000 and 300,000 machines. They want slots.
Steve: They don’t get a vote. When Dylan wrote “Shelter from the Storm,” he didn’t ask people to contribute to the lyrics. Plays don’t stop so the playwright can ask the audience what scene they’d like to see next.

…

Woz: Computers aren’t paintings.
Steve: Fuck you. I’m gonna say “fuck you” every time you say that until you either die or stop.
Woz: Computers aren’t paintings.
Steve: Fuck you. Yes, they are, and what I want is a closed system. End-to-end control. Completely incompatible with anything.
Woz: Computers aren’t supposed to have human flaws. I’m not going to build this one with yours.

…

Joanna: Please, you have to tell me why it’s so important for it to say “hello”.
Steve: Hollywood, they make computers scary things. See how this reminds you of a friendly face? That the disk slot is a goofy grin? It’s warm and it’s playful and it needs to say “hello”!
Joanna: The computer in 2001 said “hello” all the time and it still scared the shit out of me.

…

John: Did we use skinheads as extras on that Superbowel commercial? A couple of people have told me that.
Steve: Yeah.
John: We paid skinheads? I’ve got skinheads on my payroll?
Steve: They had a look you wanted.
John: The skinheads?
Steve: Yeah.
John: Okay, let’s keep that to ourselves.[/b]

Or, sure, they could have been Nazis. Or probably were.

[b]Reporter [on TV]: The Macintosh, Apple’s near mythological home computer, has gotten off to a rocky start in its battle with industry titan IBM. With sales originally projected to be a million in the first quarter, Apple has sold only 35,000 of the user-friendly machines in the months since it’s been available to customers.
Reporter: The insistence by Steve Jobs that it have what’s called end-to-end control, which is a way of saying that it’s not compatible with most outside hardware or software, is the Shakespearean flaw in a machine that had potential.
Reporter: Apple Computers closed two of its factories today in the wake of disappointing sales. Do you know how many Macs were sold last month? 500.
Reporter: In a move that surprised some but not all on Wall Street, the board of directors of Apple Computers voted today to fire its cofounder Steve Jobs. Did he jump or was he pushed?

…

Woz: You can’t write code… you’re not an engineer… you’re not a designer…you can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen from Xerox Parc. Jef Raskin was the leader of the Mac team before you threw him off his own project! Someone else designed the box! So how come ten times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?
Steve: I play the orchestra, and you’re a good musician. You sit right there and you’re the best in your row.
Woz: I came here to clear the air. Do you know why I came here?
Steve: Didn’t you just answer that?
Woz: I came here 'cause you’re gonna get killed. Your computer’s gonna fail. You got a college and university advisory board telling you they need a powerful work station for two to three thousand. You priced NeXT at sixty-five hundred, and that doesn’t include the optional three thousand dollar hardrive which people will discover isn’t optional, because the optical disk is too weak to do anything, and the twenty-five hundred dollar laser printer brings the total to twelve thousand dollars, and in the entire world you are the only person that cares that it’s housed in a perfect cube. You’re gonna get killed. And I came here to stand next to you while that happens 'cause that’s what friends do… that’s what men do. I don’t need your pass. We go back, so don’t talk to me like I’m other people. I’m the only one that knows that this guy here is someone you invented. I’m standing by you because that perfect cube - that does nothing - is about to be the single biggest failure in the history of personal computing.
Steve: Tell me something else I don’t know.

…

Joanna: I’m begging you to manage expectations.
Steve: Have I ever let you down?
Joanna: Every single goddamn time.
Steve: Then I’m due.

…

Steve [of the NeXT Cube]: I guess, in layman’s terms, you’d have to say we don’t have an OS.
Joel: An operating system? What do you mean?
Steve: Well, the OS is what runs the computer. In fact, it sort of is the computer.
Joel: How has it been running? How’s it gonna run this morning? What do you mean, you don’t have an OS?
Steve: It’s like this. Avie Tevanian is our chief software designer, and he wrote a demo program. It’s like we built a great car, but we haven’t built the engine. So we put a golf cart battery in there to make it go for a bit. All this computer knows how to do right now is demonstrate itself.
Joel: You’re telling me the only thing you’ve built is a black cube?
Steve: Yes. Yeah. But isn’t it the coolest black cube you’ve ever seen?

…

Steve: The board’s concerns that we didn’t show the product in the Suoerbowl ad?
John: Among other things, but my question was…
Steve: What other things? I’m asking because I’m curious. You said “among other things.”
John: Among other things, it was set in a dystopian galaxy. It took place on a planet where we don’t live. It was dark and the opposite of our brand. And we didn’t show the product. People talked about the ad but most of them didn’t know what we were selling.
Steve: The Mac needs to sell for 1,995.
John: There is no market research telling us the Mac is failing because it’s overpriced. It’s telling us that people don’t like it because they think it doesn’t do anything. It’s closed, end-to-end. We didn’t know it wasn’t what people wanted, but it isn’t. They want slots, they want choices, they want options. The way we buy stereos…mix and match components.
Steve: John, listen to me. Whoever said the customer is always right was, I promise you, a customer.

…

John: It had skinheads in it.
Steve: She was liberating them.
John: Liberating the skinheads.
Steve: The ad didn’t have anything to do with fucking skinheads. We used them as fucking extras. Nobody even knows they were skinheads.
John: I’m just saying the board had concerns…
Steve: You invented lifestyle advertising. And our brand was my brand.
John: My job is to make a recommendation to the board. We showed a lot of happy people drinking Pepsi. We didn’t say the world was going to end if you bought a Dr. Pepper. And we showed the product. We showed it being opened, we showed it being poured, being consumed.

…

Steve: You didn’t want the ad because you were trying to kill the Mac two months before it launched.
John: You are fucking delusional.
Steve: Can I mention something to you?
John: Sure.
Steve: I have no earthly idea why you’re here.
John: The story of why and how you left Apple, which is quickly becoming mythologized, isn’t true.
Steve: I’m gonna take this to the board myself.
John: Don’t do that.
Steve: I am doing that.
John: You can’t.
Steve: Why?
John: They believe you’re no longer necessary to this company.[/b]

This exchange keeps going back and forth in time. There’s the part about, what, being creative? innovative? “cool”?..and the part about dollars and cents.

[b]John: I can’t put it more simply than this: We need to put our resources into updating the Apple II.
Steve: By taking resources from the Mac.
John: It’s failing. That’s a fact.
Steve: It’s overpriced.
John: There is no evidence…
Steve: I’m the evidence! I’m the world’s leading expert on the Mac, John! What’s your resume?
John: You’re issuing contradictory instructions, you’re insubordinate, you make people miserable, our top engineers are fleeing to Sun, Dell, HP, Wall Street doesn’t know who’s driving the bus, we’ve lost hundreds of millions in value and I’m the CEO of Apple, Steve, that’s my resume!
Steve: But before that, you sold carbonated sugar water right? I sat in a fucking garage with Wozniak and invented the future, because artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.
John: Alright, well… this guy’s outta control. I’m perfectly willing to hand in my resignation tonight. But if you want me to stay, you can’t have Steve. Settle him out. He can keep a share of stock so he gets our newsletter. I’d like the secretary to call for a vote.
Steve: I fucking dare you.

…

Steve: Now, I absolutely understand why you’re upset. And I want people to know the truth too.
Joanna: It’s time.
Steve: Got it.
John: You’re gonna end me, aren’t you?
Steve: You’re being ridiculous. I’m gonna sit center court and watch you do it yourself. Then I’m gonna order a nice meal with a '55 Margaux and sign some autographs.
John: Jesus Christ…
Steve: You want some advice, Pepsi Generation? Don’t send Woz out to slap me around in the press. Anybody else… you, Markkula, Arthur Rock. Anyone but Rain Man.

…

Joanna [to Steve]: When did you change your mind and start building the Steve Jobs Revenge Machine?

…

Steve [to Joanna]: You remember Skylab? It was an unmanned satellite NASA sent up in the early '70s on a data gathering mission. The thing is, when they sent it up, they didn’t know yet how they were gonna get it back. But they felt like they were close enough that in the eight years it was gonna be up there, they’d figure it out. They’re on their way now. They didn’t. So after eight years, it came crashing down in a thousand-mile swath across the Indian Ocean.[/b]

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Reporter [on TV]: More than a year after it was first unveiled to industry insiders, the NeXT Computer is finally available in stores.
Reporter: And it appears to be two strikes in a row for Steve Jobs. Students and educators are finding it difficult to justify the machine’s high cost.
Reporter: So much for the black cube. NeXT just sold its factory to Canon and laid off half its employees.
Tom Brokaw: In the world of computers, it’s kill or be killed…
Dan Rather: Apple Computer has fallen on hard times…
Connie Chung: It is laying off about 2,500 people.
Reporter: Apple is continuing to lose market share, with no new innovations in the pipeline except the Newton, a pet project of CEO John Sculley. If you really want to be mobile, you want a Newton PDA. But then again, maybe you don’t.
Reporter: In 1980, Apple had 30% of the market. Today, Apple has only 3.2 percent.

But then comes the internet. Talk about a game changer. And Steve Jobs returns to Apple with the iMac.

[b]Bill Gates on TV: “The only thing Apple’s providing now is leadership in colors.”
Joanna: Don’t worry about it.
Steve: What does Bill Gates have against me? He dropped out of a better school than I dropped out of.
Joanna: If I give you some real projections, will you promise not to repeat them from the stage?
Steve: What do you mean, “real projections”? What have you been giving me?
Joanna: Conservative projections.
Steve: Marketing’s been lying to me?
Joanna: We’ve been managing expectations so that you don’t not.
Steve: What are the real projections?
Joanna: We’re gonna sell a million units in the first 90 days. 20,000 a month after that.
Steve: Holy shit.
Joanna: What’s more, 32% of the sales are going to go to people buying a computer for the first time. And 12% are going to people using some kind of Windows machine. That’s what Bill Gates has against you.

…

Andy: Why do you want people to dislike you?
Steve: I don’t want people to dislike me. I’m indifferent to whether they dislike me.
Andy: Since it doesn’t matter, I always have.
Steve: Really? I’ve always liked you a lot. That’s too bad.

…

Joel [of a huge photograph on the wall]: Who’s this one?
Steve: Alan Turing. Single-handedly won World War II and, for an encore, invented the computer. He won’t be part of the campaign though.
Joel: Why not?
Steve: 'Cause you just had to ask me who he was.

…

Joel: He killed himself by taking a bite of a poison apple… Alan Turing.
Steve: Yeah. There should be statues of that man. His name should be on the lips of schoolchildren.
Joel: The rainbow flag apple with a bite taken out… That’s where it came from?
Steve: No, we picked it off a list of friendly-sounding words. But wouldn’t it be great if that had been the story behind it?

…

Steve: This is a product launch, not a luncheon. The last thing I want to do is connect the iMac to…
Woz: To the only successful product that this company has ever made. I’m sorry to be blunt, but that happens to be the truth. The Lisa was a failure. The Macintosh was a failure. I don’t like talking like this, but I am tired of being Ringo when I know I was John.
Steve: Everybody loves Ringo.
Woz: And I’m tired of being patronized by you.
Steve; You think John became John by winning a raffle, Woz? You think he tricked somebody or hit George Harrison over the head? He was John because he was John.

…

Steve: You came a half-inch from putting this company out of business. Now who do I see about that? I’m letting you keep your job. You get a pass.
Woz: You know, when people used to ask me what the difference was between me and Steve Jobs, I would say Steve was the big-picture guy and I liked a solid workbench. When people ask me what the difference is now, I say “Steve’s an asshole.” Your products are better than you are, brother.
Steve: That’s the idea, brother. And knowing that, that’s the difference.
Woz: It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.

…

Joanna: Do you remember the cover of Time?
Steve: What are you talking about?
Joanna: What was on the cover?
DSteve: A computer.
Joanna: No. It was a sculpture of a computer. It was a sculpture. Time would have had to have commissioned it months in advance. You were never in the conversation for Man of the Year. Nobody lost you anything. So what else are you sure about?

…

Steve: A lawyer couple adopted me first, then gave me back after a month. They changed their mind. Then my parents adopted me. My biological mother had stipulated that whoever took me had to be college-educated, wealthy and Catholic. Paul and Clara Jobs were none of those things, so my biological mother wouldn’t sign the adoption papers.
John: What happened?
Steve: There was a legal battle that went on for a while. My mother said she refused to love me for the first year. You know, in case they had to give me back.
John: You can’t refuse to love someone, Steve.
Steve: Yeah, it turns out you can.
John: What the hell can a one-month-old do that’s so bad his parents give him back?

…

Lisa: I have Internet access at school. I read an old copy of Time, and I asked my mom some questions about my family history.
Steve; That was…Time wrote a mangled piece of journal. You were never supposed to read that.
Lisa: I had two different Harvard statisticians try to reverse-engineer the equation that you came up with to prove that 28% of American men could be my father.
Steve: Honey, I…
Lisa: You know, my mother might be a troubled woman, but what’s your excuse? That’s why I’m not impressed with your story, Dad. It’s that you knew what I was going through, and you didn’t do anything about it, and that makes you an unconscionable coward. And not for nothing, but “think” is a verb, all right, making “different” an adverb. You’re asking people to think differently. And you can talk about the Bauhaus movement and Braun and “Simplicity is sophistication” and Issey Miyake uniforms and Bob Dylan lyrics all you want, but that thing…
[she points to a photograph of the iMac]
Lisa: …looks like Judy Jetson’s Easy-Bake oven.

…

Steve: The computer. The Lisa. You know what it stood for? Behind my back, at the office, you know what it stood for?
Lisa: Local Integrated System Architecture. I was five. Why couldn’t you just lie?
Steve: I did. Of course it was named after you. Local Integrated System Architecture doesn’t even mean anything.
Lisa: Why’d you say it wasn’t all those years?
Steve: I honestly don’t know.
Lisa: Why’d you say you weren’t my father?
Steve: I’m poorly made.

…

Steve: I’m gonna put music in your pocket.
Lisa: What?
Steve: A hundred songs. A thousand songs. Five hundred songs. Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand songs. Right in your pocket. Because I can’t stand looking at that ridiculous Walkman anymore. You’re carrying around a brick playing a cassette tape. We’re not savages. I’m gonna put a thousand songs in your pocket.
Lisa: You can do that? [/b]

American youth.

Past present future.

Does it really make much difference? After all, the one thing all these “kids” share in common is this: that it is really, really hard for them to imagine sinking much lower than they already are. Indeed, what do the starving children of Africa have to complain about next to them?

Really, just ask them.

And [this being a movie] their lives all seem to revolve more or less incessantly around the same common denominator: Sex.

Fucking in other words.

As in:
Minnie: I had sex today… Holy shit!

She’s 15. He’s 40. And her mother’s boyfriend.

That’s the first line of the film. Then it really only becomes a matter of how “hip” or how “cool” the characters are. And, since the plot unfolds here on the cusp between hippes and punk rockers [and in San Francisco no less] you just know that these self-obsessed boys and girls are going to be in the general vicinity of, say, wasted.

Then there’s the “Patty Hearst” thing: screenprism.com/insights/article … tty-hearst

It’s often all about [as it often always is] what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate behavior when you are looking for a way as a “kid” to find meaning and purpose in your life. It’s just that for “American youth” this can become either considersably more simplistic or considerably more complex than for all the other kids in all the other places.

Not that I have a way in which to actually demonstraste that this is true. So, why don’t you demonstrate to me that it is not.

This is not one for those who have 1] never been in love because 2] they never wanted to be. Instead, this explores love in all the ways that only someone who is born and bred in the heartland of “American youth” could never not imagine it to be.

There’s just nothing else there. Folks ever preoccuped with either, myself or I.

It is basically then just one more an exploration into the mind of a precocious “teenager” who may not be nearly as sophisticated as she likes to imagine that she it. And then in how vulnerable she can become when she is suddenly in way, way over her head. Or on how much more perceptive when, after getting what she thought whe wanted, she finds out she really didn’t want it after all. More love and human remains. Age then being the least of it here.

IMDb

All the sex scenes between Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård’s characters were shot in the first week of filming. They had two weeks of rehearsal, discussing the emotional relationship between them, then they just got on set and did it.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary … enage_Girl
trailer: youtu.be/M9LNsSjnqBM

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL [2015]
Written and directed by Marielle Heller

[b]Minnie [making a tape recording]: My name is Minnie Goetze. I’m a 15-year-old living in San Francisco, California, recording this onto a cassette tape because my life has gotten really crazy of late, and I need to tell someone about it. If you’re listening to this without my permission, please stop now. Just stop. Okay? So… I don’t remember being born. I was a very ugly child. My appearance has not improved, so I suppose it was a lucky break when he was attracted by my youthfulness.

…

Minnie: You’re far away.
Monroe [her mother’s boyfriend]: You just gave me a hard-on.
Minnie [after sucking on his finger]: I did?
Monroe [chuckling]: Yeah, I’m hard. You don’t believe me?
[he puts her hand down his pants]
Monroe: It’s hard. See?
Minnie [voicover]: It didn’t feel too hard to me. It was still skin.

…

Monroe: I can’t believe you said you want me to fuck you. Do you really want me to fuck you?
Minnie: None of your fucking business.
Monroe: You really do want me to fuck you, don’t you? You really fucking want me to fucking fuck you.
Minnie [voiceover]: I didn’t know if I wanted him or anyone else to fuck me, but I was afraid to pass up the chance 'cause I may never get another.

…

Minnie [voiceover]: I tried giving him a blowjob in the car. He said he wants to fuck me, but we can’t tonight. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is this what it feels like for someone to love you? Somebody wants me. Somebody wants to have sex with me.[/b]

She’s 15, he’s 40. You do the math.

[b]Monroe [after Minnie makes a cross on his leg in blood]: I didn’t know you were a virgin.

…

Charlotte [mom]: Minnie, Minnie, come watch with us. Yeah, it’s history in the making.
Reporter [on TV]…by a bank camera taking part in an armed robbery…
Charlotte [to the TV]: Oh, she’s not mentally ill. Fuck this guy. Just because she left her bourgeois family to start over. I know how you feel, Patty.
Minnie: What kind of person falls in love with the people who kidnap them?

…

Minnie [voiceover]: What’s the point of living if nobody loves you? Nobody sees you. Nobody touches you. I wish I were older than I am. I’m so alone. It feels like there are little weights hanging from my heart that swing and tug every time I move, every time the wind blows.

…

Minnie [voiceover]: I want someone to be so totally in love with me that they would feel like they would die if I were gone. Maybe Monroe could love me like that…
[cut to Minnie lying in Monroe’s arms]
Minnie: What’s your favorite color?
Monroe: I don’t know. Blue? Why are you asking me such stupid questions?
Minnie [voiceover]: …or maybe not.

…

Minnie [recording]: Monroe says I exude sexuality. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and I can’t believe what I see. I just realized I’ve had breasts for three full years now!

…

Minnie [recording]: He’s fucked me seven times now. All I can think about is the fucking.

…

Charlotte [of Patty Hearst]: Even if she knew what she was doing in the bank, she was a prisoner. Kidnapped, raped.
Monroe: Come on, she’s a victim? Mmm, I don’t know. I guess it does seem kind of counter-progressive or something.
Charlotte: It’s bullshit. It’s fascist, misogynistic bullshit!

…

Charlotte: Kimmie’s kind of white trash, don’t you think?
Minnie: She is not.
Charlotte: No, I mean it in a good way. You know, she’s like down-to-earth.

…

Charlotte: You know, you’re not gonna have that bod forever, Min. I know that’s not very feminist of me to say, but you might be happier if you put it out there a little bit, you know? Wear some makeup? Wear a skirt once in a while? Jesus. Get some attention. You have a kind of power, you know. You just…You don’t know it yet.[/b]

No? Let’s ask Monroe.

[b]Monroe [after having sex with Minnie]: We have to stop this.
Minnie: Why would you say that? Do you think I’m fat?
(Monroe chuckles)
Minnie: You’re so fucking confusing with your adult codes and bullshit. I’m used to the more honest means of communication used between children. You know, I’m almost still a child. You know?
Monroe: Yeah, I know that.

…

Minnie [voiceover]: Maybe I should just ignore everything. But I like sex. I wanna get laid right now. I really like getting fucked. Does everyone think about fucking as much as I do?

…

Minnie: Get your hands off me. Get your hands off me or…
Monroe: Or what?
Minnie: Or I’m gonna tell my mother!
Monroe [suddenly serious]: Get dressed.
Minnie: You can’t take it?
Monroe: Get dressed, I’m taking you home.
Minnie: No!
Monroe: You ruined it, Minnie! You’re a fucking child! I should tell your mother!

…

Minnie [voiceover]: What we did gets me sick. It was so pornographic. The sexual nature of Kimmie Minter is a viscous cervical mucus that always welcomes mating.[/b]

And with Monroe no less.

[b]Charlotte: Well, have you!
Monroe: Are you crazy? She’s just a kid.
Charlotte: Yeah, she may just be a kid, but she’s still got tits and ass!

…

Minnie [voiceover]: Everything is so loveless and mediocre…

…

Monroe [from the shower] I love you.
Minnie [voiceover]: He was vulnerable and weak. It was all I’d ever wanted, and now I had no desire for it.
Monroe: You know, I was thinking, if you can keep it together, we could really date when you turn 18. I mean, it’s not that far away.[/b]

She’s already out the door.

[b]Kimmie: You scared? To try it?
Minnie: No. I’m not afraid of anything.
Kimmie: No?
Minnie: No. I’m not afraid of knives or guns, or fire or poison, rape, or being kidnapped and tortured, or brainwashed, hypnotized like that Patty Hearst girl.
Kimmie: Are you afraid of me?
Minnie: A little.

…

Monroe: Okay. Uh… Minnie… Your mother and I, we’ve been talking, and she, or we, thought that…maybe you and I should get married.
Minnie: You’re drunk.
Monroe: I’m not drunk. I mean, we get along pretty well. Don’t you think? I think we do.
Charlotte: That’s not the point, that you get along with her. That’s not the point. The point is that you porked my daughter, and so you’re gonna marry her. That’s the point.
Minnie: Mom.
Charlotte: What? It’s true, right? He porked you? He porked you, and so now he’s gotta marry you!
Monroe: People are staring.
Charlotte: Who cares? Fuck you. What, are you embarrassed? You embarrassed that you porked my daughter?
Minnie: Mom, are you crazy? Stop saying “pork”!

…

Minnie [voiceover]: It’s not a lit-up streetlight hazy darkness like most nights. It is a black crisp night and my eyes are like headlights. I’ve become nothing, finally. No home, no school, no money.

…

Minnie: What’s not a big deal?
Kimmie: It’ll be very quick. He only takes a few minutes.

…

Minnie [voiceover]: I always thought I wanted to be exactly like my mom. But she thinks she needs a man to be happy. I don’t.

…

Minnie [voiceover]: So, maybe nobody loves me. Maybe nobody will ever love me. But maybe it’s not about being loved by somebody else.[/b]

Again, she is 15 fucking years old. Not that I don’t completely agree. Always be your own best friend. I know that I always have been. And I can assure that, among others things, I have never, ever been bored.

Imagine it…

You are sexually abused as a child. And not just by anyone. Here the man who abused you goes on to become a best-selling author. He writes a book in which the sexual abuse becomes part of the plot. You become part of the plot.

And it is now your task to edit the book.

You told your parents but after confronting him he manages to convince them that your side of the story reflects little more than a little girl with an over-active imagination.

Back and forth we go: The past and the present. How one evolves into the other. And how both are instrumental in providing us with options to a possible future. It’s a classic example of how the dots are connected between them from a particular point of view.

It is also an exploration into the gap between the abuser exercising his power to coerce sex from a completely vulnerable child and the dire consequences that can follow the child throughout her lifetime. The emotional and psychological travail that never really ever goes away. Only here the abuser is not some thug on the street, but a man who has become a part of the world that her family thrives in: the world of books and authors and publishing.

In other words, he “seduces” her. He “charms” her. And then in her mind [down the road with other men] she can come to equate this sort of thing [someone “loving” her] with someone tricking her only in order to fuck her. Or maybe he even tricks himself into believing that it is not just sex.

Still, when push comes to shove this is just one snapshot depicting a set of circumstances that might be experienced [and then reacted to] in any number of different ways.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Book
trailer: youtu.be/W4pCpK7da1E

THE GIRL IN THE BOOK [2015]
Written and directed by Marya Cohn

[b]Milan: I would like to read your story.
Alice [as a child]: It’s nothing.
Milan: Why don’t you let me decide.

…

Milan [to Alice]: Tell me about your day…

…

Alice: I read your new bio. It talked about your teaching a lot.
Milan: Yes, I enjoy it.
Alice: I’m sure.
Milan: You were my first and best student.
Alice [clearly distraught]: I gotta go…

…

Alice: I shouldn’t have told you. It’s not a big deal.
Sadie: He hurt you Allie. You don’t do publicity for someone who hurt you.
Alice: It’s my job.
Sadie; I thought your job was to find and edit new and wonderful novels.
Alice: Tell that to Jack.

…

Milan: What are you writing?
Alice [as a child]: My journal.
[Milan gestures to let him read it…Alice shakes her head]
Milan: I want to know you.
Alice: You can’t.
Milan: One page.
[next thing you know she is in his arms on the bed]
Milan: I have to get up. My heart is pounding. I have to get up.

…

Dad: Where the hell did it come from. It reeks.
Alice [as a child]: I think it’s Milan’s.
Dad: Milan’s…?
Alice: He was here this afternoon.
Dad: Well…did he bring by a new draft?
Alice: He…he came to see me.
Dad: You…?
Alice: Yeah, he’s been helping me with my writing.
Dad [perplexed]: What? Since when.
Alice: A while.
Dad: Well, yiou couldn’t have a better mentor. You’re a lucky girl.
Alice: Yeah…
Dad: I expect great things of you.

…

Emmett: Is this what you do every Saturday morning, you just sit here and read sbout other people’s lives?
Alice: No, that is pretty much a full time occupation.
Emmett: You know it’s pointless right?
Alice: Yes, I do.

…

Alice: You can’t write in front of me.
Emmett: What?
Alice: I’m serious. If anyone is going to write in my apartment, it’s going to be me.
Emmett: But you don’t.
Alice: Thank you for pointing that out.
Emmett: Come on, it’s not like there’s a finite number of words in the room and if I use them all there won’t be enough left for you.
Alice: Why does everything always have to make so much sense…

…

Interviewer: What do you think makes Waking Eyes so perennially popular.
Milan: What I think it is is that everyone has been a teenager and we all know how out of kilter it can be.
[cut to Alice watching from another room]

…

Emmett [to Alice after he finds out about Keith]: I will not let you make me as crazy as you are.

…

Sadie: You know I love you almost more than anyone…but I’m starting not to like you very much. And I’ll never forgive you for that. I need to not see you for a while.
Alice: What about the book?
Sadie: Screw you, Alice.

…

Milan [of Alice’s boyfriend]: Did he make you come? I want to make you come. I want to be the first person to make you come.

…

Alice: It’s just something that I do. I’ve always done. A look in a guy’s eyes like he wants me…I don’t know. It’s the one thing that makes me feel real.
Emmett: I want you.
Alice: No…
Emmett: So…?
Alice: So it wears off. I start wondering what’s wrong with this guy. Why can’t he do better?

…

Mom: Alice…Alice, what it is it?
Alice [as a child]: I have to tell you something…

…

Alice: Stop the car. Please stop the car!!

…

Alice: Is this the new book?
Milan: Yeah.
Alice: Whose life did you appropriate this time?

…

Alice: Concrete details. You must give me concrete details to make it real.
Milan: I know…I know at that age everything seems enormous.
Alice: Your warm heavy arms around me. The smoky taste of your tongue in my mouth.
Milan: I was helping you.
Alice: The feel of your hard-on against my thigh.
Milan: But nothing really happened.
Alice: Yes it did!
Milan: Yes, but you seemed to enjoy it at the time.
Alice; You were one of the few people who actually seemed to see me. To make me feel real and important.
Milan: But you are.
Alice: You used me. Then you abandoned me. You made me feel like I was nothing all over again.

…

Emmett: You’re the girl in the book aren’t you?
Alice: Not anymore.[/b]

The first thing that might pop into your head watching the film is this: Is it based on true story? Now, the author of the book the film is based on insists that it is not. Still, over the years, we have come across any number of stories in the news in which someone has in fact been kidnapped and held captive somewhere in one or another rendition of “the room”. So we know that it might just as well have been.

And then we marvel at the gap that must exist between “reality” before and “reality” after escaping. Especially given the fact that for the child the only world that he has ever known is the one inside the room. Just a shed in the kidnapper’s back yard. It is a world that his mother has to create for him. It is a world that becomes whatever his mother tells him that it is. And then, after the escape, he has to adjust to a “real world” that most of us just take for granted in the first five years of our lives.

Jack is allowed to watch TV, so he knows there are creatures that look like him populating all of the different shows. But these creatures apparently only exist in the TV world. Or so his mother tells him. Meanwhile he is made to sleep in the closest when his biological father comes into the room from time to time to rape his mother.

It’s surreal in large part for Jack because he has always been taught that what he sees on TV are just pictures of people and things that only exist in TV Land. Whereas what so many “normal” children see on TV is something that they see as “on TV” but as “real” too. One can only imagine than a child living like this not just through his 5th birthday, but through his 15th…or beyond.

And then [of course] there’s the part where they become The Celebrities. They’re on the news. Everywhere. Everyone wants a piece of their story. Everyone has something to sell. Everyone wants their chance to be part of all the hoopla. And then once you become A Celebrity in the “modern world” you can find yourself imprisoned in just another kind of Room.

IMDb

[b]Jacob Tremblay, though an experienced actor, could not bring himself to yell at Brie Larson in the scene where he is angry about his birthday cake having no candles. Finally the director had the entire cast and crew start jumping up and down yelling and screaming until he was able to do it himself.

Brie Larson isolated herself in her home for a month without a phone or internet and followed a strict diet in order to get a sense of what Ma and Jack were going through. Larson has said that because she considers herself an introvert who prefers to stay at home, she thought that her month of isolation would be a vacation, but towards the last week she became very depressed and would cry all day.

In several interviews, the author of the book on which the movie is based has said the story is not based on any specific real-life case.

In preparation for her profoundly complicated character portrayal, Brie Larson spent hours with a trauma specialist researching the psyche of one incarcerated to the extreme degree of her character “Ma.” This was not the kind of information that could be readily found in a Google search.

Director Lenny Abrahamson saw more than 2000 child actors before he came across Jacob Tremblay’s audition tape. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/PPZqF_TPTGs

ROOM [2015]
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

[b]Ma: Ssh. Go back to sleep.
Jack [reciting to himself]: Once upon a time, before I came, you cried and cried and watched TV all day, until you were a zombie. But then I zoomed down from heaven, through skylight, into Room. Whoosh-pshew! And I was kicking you from the inside. Boom, boom! And then I shot out onto Rug with my eyes wide open, and you cutt-ed the cord and said, “Hello, Jack!”

…

Jack: Is bad tooth hurting?
Ma: Mmhmm, but you know mind over matter.
Jack: If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

…

Ma: We don’t have any candles, I know.
Jack: You said a birthday cake, or real. That means candles on fire.
Ma: Jack… It’s okay without the candles. It’s still a birthday cake.
Jack: You should ask for candles for a Sunday treat, not dumb jeans.
Ma: I’m sorry. You know, I have to ask for stuff that we really need, stuff that he can get easily.
Jack: But old Nick gets anything, by magic.

…

Jack [thinking to himself]: There’s room, then outer space, with all the TV planets, then heaven. Plant is real, but not trees. Spiders are real, and one time the mosquito that was sucking my blood. But squirrels and dogs are just TV, except Lucky. He’s my dog who might come some day. Monsters are too big to be real, and the sea. TV persons are flat and made of colors. But me and you are real.

…

Jack: Mouse is my friend, and you splattered him dead.
Ma: No, I didn’t. He’s hunky-dory.
Jack: Are you tricking me?
Ma: No, Jack, I swear. He is safe at home in the backyard with his ma.
Jack: What backyard? Mouse lives in a yard in TV?

…

Jack: Where do we go when we’re asleep?
Ma: Right here in room.
Jack: But dreams…Do we go to, into TV for dreaming?
Ma: Mm-mm. We’re never anywhere but here.

…

Man: Maybe if you could stop complaining and be a little grateful.
Ma: Thank you.
Man: God, it’s fucking pulling teeth sometimes.
Ma: Thank you for everything.
Man: You just have no idea about the world of today.
Ma: No.
Man: No. Who pays the power bill? Who pays for everything?
Ma: You.
Man: Mm-hmm. And how do you think I’m gonna be able to keep doing that?
Ma: What do you mean?
Man: Nothing.
Ma: No what does that mean?
Man: Six months. I’ve been laid off. Six months. Yeah. If you had to worry your little head…
Ma: What are you gonna do about it? Are you looking for a job?
Man: There are no fucking jobs!

…

Ma: Jack, do you remember the mouse? He’s on the other side of this wall.
Jack: What other side?
Ma: Jack, there’s two sides to everything.
Jack: Not on an octagon.
Ma: Yeah, but…
Jack: An octagon has eight sides
Ma: But a wall, okay, a wall’s like this, see? And we’re on the inside and mouse is on the outside.
Jack: In outer space?
Ma: No, in the world. It’s much closer than outer space.
Jack: I can’t see the outside-side.
Ma: Listen, I know that I told you something else before, but you were much younger. I didn’t think that you could understand, but now you’re so old, you’re so smart. I know that you can get this. Where do you think that old Nick gets our food?
Jack: From TV by magic!
Ma: There is no magic. What you see on TV, those are pictures of real things, of real people. It’s real stuff…other people, they have faces like us. Those are pictures of real things, and all the other stuff you see on there, that’s real, too. That’s real oceans, real trees, real cats, dogs.
Jack: No way!

…

Jack: You’re just tricking me.
Ma: No, I’m not. Jack. I couldn’t explain it before, because you were too small. You were too small to understand, so I had to make up a story, but… But now I’m doing the opposite, okay? I’m doing the opposite of lying. I am un-lying, because you’re five now. You’re five, and you’re old enough to understand what the world is. You have to understand. You have to understand. We can’t keep living like this. You need to help me. Jack: I want to be four again.

…

Ma: When I was I was 17…I was walking home from school…
Jack: Where was I?
Ma: You were still up in heaven. But there was a guy. He pretended that his dog was sick.
Jack: What guy?
Ma: Old Nick. We call him “old Nick.” I don’t know what his real name is. But he pretended his dog was sick…
Jack: What’s the dog’s name?
Ma; Jack, there wasn’t a dog. He was trying to trick me, okay? There wasn’t a dog. Old Nick stole me.
Jack: I want a different story!
Ma: No! This is the story that you get. He put me in his garden shed. Here. Room is the shed. He’s locked the door. He’s the only one that knows the code… You know, the secret numbers that open the door? He’s the only one that knows, and I’ve been locked in here for seven years. I’ve been in here for seven years!!! Do you understand?
Jack: This story’s boring!

…

Ma [to Jack]: Now, we’ve got a chance. We’ve nearly missed it, but we’ve got our chance. So you’re gonna help me. You’re gonna help me trick old Nick.

…

Ma: You’re gonna love it.
Jack: What?
Ma: The world.

…

Jack [voiceover]: I’ve been in the world 37 hours. I’ve seen pancakes, and a stairs, and birds, and windows, and hundreds of cars. And clouds, and police, and doctors, and grandma and grandpa. But Ma says they don’t live together in the hammock house anymore. Grandma lives there with her friend Leo now. And Grandpa lives far away. I’ve seen persons with different faces, and bigness, and smells, talking all together. The world’s like all TV planets on at the same time, so I don’t know which way to look and listen. There’s doors and… more doors. And behind all the doors, there’s another inside, and another outside. And things happen, happen, happening. It never stops. Plus, the world’s always changing brightness, and hotness. And there’s invisible germs floating everywhere. When I was small, I only knew small things. But now I’m five, I know everything!

…

Lawyer So, the other thing that we need to discuss is some sort of media strategy.
Joy: God, we’re not ready for talking like that, not yet, so…
Lawyer: Okay, um… There’s gonna be expenses moving forward and a “prime time” interview, just one “prime time” interview, means a lot of money.

…

Joy [to her mother]: I’m sorry that I’m not nice anymore, but you know what? Maybe if your voice saying “be nice” hadn’t been in my head, then maybe I wouldn’t have helped the guy with the fucking sick dog!

…

Talk Show Hostess: When he’s older, will you tell Jack about his father?
Joy: Jack’s not his.
Talk Show Hostess: He’s not his. So are you saying that there were other men?
Joy: No! No. Um… A father is… a man who loves his child.
Talk Show Hostess: Of course. That’s so true in a very real sense, but the… the biological relationship that you…
Joy: That’s not a relationship. Jack is… Is nobody’s but mine.
Talk Show Hostess: When he was born, did it… Did it ever occur to you to ask your captor to take Jack away?
Joy: Away?
Talk Show Hostess: Well, to take him to a hospital, say, leave him there, where he could found?
Joy: Why… why would I do that?
Talk Show Hostess: So Jack could be free. Now, this is the ultimate sacrifice… And I understand that… But did you think about him having a normal childhood?
Joy: But he had me.
Talk Show Hostess: Of course he did. But was that the best thing for him?

…

Jack [voiceover]: There’s so much of place in the world. There’s less time, because the time has to be spread extra thin over all the places, like butter. So all the persons say, “hurry up. Let’s get going. Pick up the pace. Finish up now.”

…

Jack [voiceover]: When I was four, I didn’t even know about the world, and now me and ma are going to live in it forever and ever until we’re dead. This is a street in a city in a country called America, and earth. That’s a blue and green planet, always spinning, so I don’t know why we don’t fall off. Then, there’s outer space. And nobody knows where’s heaven. Ma and I have decided that because we don’t know what we like, we get to try everything. There are so many things out here. And sometimes, it’s scary, but that’s okay, because it’s still just you and me.

…

Jack: Can we go back to Room?
Ma: Jack…
Jack: Just for a visit.

…

Jack: Is this Room?
Ma: Yeah.
Jack: Has it gotten shrinked? Where is everything?
Ma: Taken for evidence. Proof that we were here.
Jack: It’s because door’s open.
Ma: What?
Jack: It can’t really be Room if door’s open.
Ma: Do you want me to close it?
Jack: Nah.
Ma: Jack, can we go?
Jack: Bye, plant. Bye, chair number one. Bye, chair number two. Bye, table. Bye, wardrobe. Bye, sink. Bye-bye, skylight. Ma, say bye-bye to Room.[/b]

In large part, my own marriage crumbled when my ex-wife became involved politically with women in Baltimore who had created the magazine Women: A journal of Liberation. Most of them were either separatists or lesbians. Many were both. And, sure enough, my ex-wife came to embrace both frames of mind as well.

I bring that up because to the best of my recollection none of these women were transgender. I don’t even recall the subject coming up among them. Of late however the “transgender issue” seems to be just about everywhere. Men becoming women, women becoming men. And not just “psychologically”. Now with surgery one can literally become the gender of their choice. The gender that brings into alignment mind and matter. The gender such that how you have come to think of yourself and the body come into sync.

But: There had to be those who were first to do this. Those who “pioneered” this sort of radical transformation. And in a day and age when, politically, there was not exactly a lot of support “in society” to be found.

Still, imagine this all unfolding in America in 1926. Instead of in Denmark. And yet even there and then there were those who wanted to lock him up for “perversion”.

On the other hand, his wife not only tolerated it, she seemed to encourage it. Or did she? What was real and what was not? Which prompts you to wonder why: and both in terms of love and lust. There are those who become the opposite sex in order to engage the opposite sex…and those in order to engage the same sex. Or to engage both. And one suspects there might be a visceral antagonism towards them precisely because the lines between gender become…blurred.

Also, gay or straight, transgendered or not, we all eventually succumb to the fact that being “human all too human” is something that envelops us from the cradle to the grave. No one is ever immune to all the trials and tribulations that this entails.

And then of course there is always the question of the extent to which this is rooted more in nature or in nurture. Or in what particular combination of both. Though I don’t count myself among those who imagine something like this can [or ever will] actually be known.

IMDb

[b]Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe wasn’t the first transgender person nor the first to undergo sex reassignment surgery, she was only among the first. Carla van Crist, Toni Ebel and Dörchen Ritcher had already had the surgery before Lili arrived in Berlin. There was an Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919, that was like the Kinsey institute, and they were doing the operations, but the Nazis destroyed the files in 1933, so it’s not possible to know for sure who’s the first person who did the surgery. Lili’s operations were made by Kurt Warnekros in Dresden, her first surgery was made under Hirschfeld’s supervision in Berlin.

The true origin of Gerda Wegener (Gerda Gottlieb Wegener Porta (15 March 1886 - 28 July 1940)) (not to be confused with German makeup artist Gerda Wegener) is Danish, not American. David Ebershoff, the author of the novel in which the movie is based on, changed her name to Greta Waud and her origin to American and California-born to please the American readers. Both the novel and the film omitted that Gerda was lesbian or at least bisexual and had an open relationship with Einar/Lili that allowed her to live as a lesbian - the accounts suggest that they were more like sisters than spouses or lovers (Gerda lived openly as a lesbian in Paris in 1912). But in the film, she is portrayed as a straight, faithful and suffering wife who never left her husband. Gerda Wegener’s famous Lesbian Erotica paintings are never mentioned in the film.

Einar and Gerda’s marriage officially lasted 26 years (1904-1930), they got married at 22 and 18 years old, respectively. Lili was 47 years old when she got the sex reassignment surgery and died at 48, due to organ rejection after a uterus transplant. Eddie Redmayne was 33 when he shot the film, while Alicia Vikander was 26. The film only mentions that Einar and Gerda had been married for 6 years. Gerda Wegener was 44 during the events portrayed in the film and died at the age of 54, due to a heart attack.

Lili consulted two physicians, both whom diagnosed her as homosexual, a third physician diagnosed her as intersexed and claimed she had rudimentary female sex organs. Hormonal assays taken just before her first surgery indicated more female than male hormones present. It is likely that she had XXY sex chromosome karyotype (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) a condition not medically recognized until 1942. The fact that Lili was Intersex is not mentioned in the film.

The only trans actors in the film have small parts. Trans actress Rebecca Root plays one of Lili’s nurses, and Jake Graf, a transgender man, also plays a small part appearing next to Matthias Schoenaerts at the art gallery during the exhibition of Gerda’s portraits. Jake Graf revealed on his Instagram account on January 5, 2016, that the rest of his scenes with Schoenaerts were consigned to the cutting room floor.

The film has been criticized for the casting of a cisgender man to play a trans woman; for being written similarly to forced feminization erotica; obscuring the actual story of a trans person; for being based on a fictional book that doesn’t tell the true story of Einar/Lili and Gerda Wegener, and also for being sold as a biopic of a transgender woman when in fact, the film revolves around a cisgender straight female. Even with so many inaccuracies and so little of the real story of Lili and Gerda, the film is still being marketed as a “true story” of “unconditional love”. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danish_Girl_(film
trailer: youtu.be/d88APYIGkjk

THE DANISH GIRL [2015]
Directed by Tom Hooper

[b]Man [being painted by Gerda]: I appreciate our being alone today. I hope your husband doesn’t mind.
Gerda: Not at all. I could see his being here made you uncomfortable.
Man: It wasn’t personal.
Gerda: It’s not uncommon. It’s hard for a man to be looked at by a woman. Women are used to it, of course, but for a man to, um, submit to a woman’s gaze. It’s unsettling. Although I believe there’s some pleasure to be had from it, once you, um, yield.

…

Gerda: Could you help me with something?
Einar: Anything.
Gerda: Ulla has an extra rehearsal. She canceled again. Would you try on her stockings and shoes? I’m just so behind, I don’t know how I’ll be finished in time for her opening.
Einar: Yeah, I’ll…I’ll do it. It’s fine, I’ll do it.

…

Gerda: No, I need the dress.
Einar: No.
Gerda: I need to see how the hem falls.
Einar: No, Gerda, I’m not putting it on.
Gerda [drapping the dress over him instead]: Well, I haven’t asked you to.[/b]

And that’s all it took. He is sitting there in the stockings, with the dress wrapped all around him; and you see the transformation in his face: he likes it. Great acting.

[b]Ulla [who comes into the room]: Well, hello, there!
[she walks over to Einar]
Ulla: Oh, don’t worry, my darling. We’re going to call you…Lili.

…

Einar [of Gerda’s nightgown]: It’s new.
Gerda: That’s very observant.
Einar: Oh, no, leave it on. It’s pretty.
Gerda: I might let you borrow it.
Einar: I might enjoy that.
Gerda: Is there something you’d like to tell me?
Einar: Is there something you’d like to know?

…

Gerda: Don’t make her a slut!
Einar: It’s your fault. You excite her.

…

Gerda [to Einar on his public debut as Lili]: Are you sure about tonight?

…

Gerda: Ulla, let me introduce…
Ulla: Lili!

…

Gerda: Exactly what happened between you and Sandahl last night?
Einar: Nothing. It was nothing.
Gerda: Did he know it was you?
Einar: It wasn’t as simple as that.
Gerda: I watched him kiss you, Einar, so could you please make an effort?
Einar: He may have known who I was, but I wasn’t always me. There was a moment when I was just Lili, and I think that he could see that. Do you see?
Gerda: But Lili doesn’t exist. We made her up.
Einar: I know.
Gerda: We were playing a game.
Einar: I know we were. But then…something changed.
Gerda [angrily]: This is absurd. We… We need to stop. You need to stop, Einar.
Einar: I am going to try.

…

Doctor [to Einar]: So, you saw Dr. Andersen after a bout of severe nosebleeds, which you have come to believe coincide with the stomach cramps, and on a monthly basis. Hmm. So. How long have you been married?
Einar: Six years.
Doctor: Children?
Einar: No.
Doctor: Is there regular copulation?
Einar: Yes. Perhaps less now than before…
Doctor: Than before you started to dress as a woman?
[Einar displays signs of embarassment]
Doctor: I’m a specialist, Mr. Wegener. You may be embarrassed. I am not. Tell me about Lili. Where does she come from?
Einar: Inside me.
Doctor: You know, the most likely explanation for all of this is a chemical imbalance.
Einar: Really?
Doctor: That would explain the pain, the confused state of masculinity and the infertility. Let’s hope it is that, because that, at least, we can cure.

…

Einar: There’s nothing wrong with me.
Gerda: That’s not true.
Einar:Gerda, this can’t be right.
Doctor: Radiation is a miracle, Mr. Wegener. It destroys the bad and saves the good.

…

Doctor [after the radiation “treatment”]: How are you feeling this morning?
Einar: You hurt Lili.

…

Doctor: I’m afraid your husband’s aberrant thinking persists. Do you keep a lock on your wardrobe?
Gerda: Of course not.
Doctor: Mrs. Wegener, you’re not encouraging this delusion? You do understand that your husband is insane?
Gerda: No. That’s not true. We trusted you. We came to you for help.
[the doctor storms away disgusted]

…

Hans [to Gerda]: We were fooling in the kitchen. Einar was wearing his grandmother’s apron… We were just little boys, you know, playing around? Anyway, Einar just looked so pretty and… I had to kiss him! So, yes, I kissed Einar.

…

Gerda: Hans. May I introduce Lili Wegener. Einar’s cousin from home.

…

Hans: Can I take you to dinner? To celebrate? I think someone ought to.
Gerda: No. Thank you.
Hans: Gerda. Have I offended you?
Gerda: No.
Hans [taking her hand]: Gerda.
Gerda: I’m still Einar’s wife.

…

Gerda: You should have come. A little sort of celebration. This is not how it goes. We do these things together.
Lili: That was you and Einar.
Gerda: Stop playing that stupid, stupid game.
Lili: Please, Gerda. Don’t you think this is a game.
Gerda: You should have been there!
Lili: How could I? Look at me.
Gerda: Not everything is about you. I need to see Einar.
Lili: Let me help, please.
Gerda: I need my husband. Go get him.
Lili: I can’t.
Gerda: I need to talk to my husband, and I need to hold my husband. I need him. Can’t you just get him? Can’t you at least try?
Lili: No. I’m sorry.

…

Lili: I don’t think I can give you what you want. I don’t know how long we can go on like this.
Gerda: No.

…

Ulla [to Gerda]: There’s a doctor. He runs the Women’s Clinic in Dresden. He’s interested in men like Einar who are…confused. Men who are different.

…

Gerda: Did I do this to you?
Lili: What?
Gerda: Sometimes, I… I wonder… If it hadn’t been for the paintings…
Lili: No. Gerda, no. You helped bring Lili to life, but she was always there. She was always waiting.
Gerda: Now she’s making you ill.
Lili: I don’t know what to do. The doctors can’t help me.
Gerda: Do you want to try one more?

…

Lili: Professor Warnekros, the fact is I believe that I am a woman, inside.
Gerda: And I believe it too.
Lili: You probably think that I’m insane. Or that we both are.
Professor Warnekros: Well, there are people who think that I’m insane. But I think you’re probably right. I’ve met another man like you. I pursued his case, against the wishes of my colleagues, of course. I told him I could operate to make him fully a woman. That was what he wanted.
Lili: Is that really possible?
Gerda: What happened to the man? Was the operation successful?
Professor Warnekros: On the morning of the first operation, he ran away. He was too frightened.
Lili: I wouldn’t do that. I…
Professor Warnekros: Perhaps he was the smart one. The surgery has never been attempted before. Never.

…

Gerda: Professor Warnekros, what is the surgery?
Professor Warnekros: Two operations. The first, to remove the male parts entirely. The second, once you’re strong enough again, to construct a vagina. An irreversible change and a high risk of failure. Infections. Complications.
Gerda: It’s too dangerous.
Lili: It’s my only hope.

…

Professor Warnekros: Mrs. Wegener, I do believe I can help your husband. But he won’t be your husband when I’ve finished.

…

Hans [to Einar/Lili]: I’ve only liked a handful of people in my life, and you’ve been two of them.
…

Henrik: So, what you’re suggesting is that, uh, a doctor
intervened.
Lili: To correct a mistake in nature.
Henrik: He made you a woman.
Lili: No, God made me a woman. But the doctor… He… The doctor is curing me of the sickness that was my disguise.
Henrik: A real woman.

…

Lili: You know, sometimes I do wonder why you let me go through all this, if you thought that everything would be the same afterwards.
Gerda: I didn’t. But I promised Einar that I would take care of you.
Lili: For goodness’ sakes, Gerda, Einar is dead. We both have to accept that. You took care of me, but now I have to take care of myself. I have to have a life of my own. And you need to do the same.

…

Hans: How are you Lili?
Einar: I…am…entirely…myself.

…

Lili [to Gerda]: Last night I had the most beautiful dream. I dreamed that I was a baby in my mother’s arms. And she looked down at me, and she called me Lili.[/b]

Imagine it…

You’re a woman falling in love with a woman who is really a man who thinks of himself as a woman.

Yet another exploration into gender, gender roles, gender assumptions.

Or, as one reviewer put it: “It’s a fascinating study of gender identification and queer stigma, examining the insecurities about gender roles, projection and sexuality.”

On the other hand: What does that actually mean?

This more than likely: That each of us as individuals will react to what we see on the screen based largely on our own personal experiences. Also, on the particular political prejudices that have been hammered into our heads by others living in one or another community.

Isn’t that always the bottom line?

And then it will come down to whether or not you will attempt to argue that how you think and feel about these things is that which all rational men and women are obligated to think and to feel in turn. And then from what is deemed rational to what is deemed moral.

What’s crucial here though is how a new experience in our life can propel us to change our minds. But that’s the part that many resist. Why? Because it focuses the beam on the existential relationship between “I” and our value judgments. And once that is embraced we can rarely go back to thinking that right and wrong can actually be “reasoned” — defined, deduced – into existence.

Then there’s the part where the man not only thinks of himself as a woman, but as a woman about as far removed from the way in which feminists want us to think of a woman as you can get. Invariably the transvestites in films like this are ultra “feminine”. It’s all [or almost all] about “looks” and make-up and fashion and shopping.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Girlfriend_(film
trailer: youtu.be/NBEDx5cy2HI

THE NEW GIRLFRIEND [Une Nouvelle Amie] 2014
Written and directed by François Ozon

[b]Claire [at Laura’s funeral]: Laura was my best friend. My friend for life. The moment we met it was love at first sight. Because it was her and it was me. We were only seven, but we knew we’d be together forever.

…

Claire [at Laura’s funeral]: And when we were children, we made a pact. I made you a promise. And that promise, Laura, I will keep. As long I live, I will watch over your daughter Lucie and her father David.

…

Claire: Hello madam…
[Instead, it’s David dressed in women’s clothes and a blonde wig]
Claire: Sorry, I won’t bother you.
David: No, Claire, don’t go. Stay. Let me explain…

…

David [now dressed as a man]: First of all, Laura knew.
Claire: Seriously?

…

David: Before we married, I confessed to her that I sometimes dress as a woman. Just occasionally, for fun. For pleasure. She accepted it. The only thing she asked is that I not do it in public.
Claire: But now she’s dead!
David: Claire, I have never left this house as a woman. No one has ever seen me. Except you today. By accident. When Laura and I were together I stopped feeling the need. Her presense, her femininity were enough. I loved her so much. When she died it started again.

…

David: Raising a child alone is too hard. I just thought that I could provide a maternal presence. Every child needs a mother.
Claire: And a father.
David: I’m doing both. It’s temporary…to soften the blow of losing Laura while we adjust to her absense.
Claire [fiercely]: You’re not doing this for Lucie. It’s for your own pleasure. You’re a pervert.
David [after a long pause]: You may be right.
[Claire bolts for the door]
David: Claire, please! Don’t tell anyone, not even Gilles.
Claire: I don’t know…
David: Laura’s parents might try to take Lucie away. And I love her so much.

…

David: I’d like you to understand. The way Laura always did.
Claire: Stop bringing Laura into it. [/b]

But she soon comes around. Boy does she come around!

[b]Gilles: I’ve always felt that David was a bit…
Claire: A bit what?
Gilles: There’s something very…feminine about him.
Claire: Really?
Gilles: Yeah. I’m sure he loved Laura and she loved him. But I imagine men like him too.

…

Laura [after a fierce orgasm]: Did you come?
Gilles: No. But it’s okay.

…

David: My first time out as a woman.
Claire: You might want to change your voice.

…

Claire [to David made up as Virginia]: Maybe you shouldn’t hold my hand. That man’s staring.
David: Don’t worry. Women often hold hands.
Claire: Certain women.

…

Claire: Forget to shave?
[David as Virginia feels his chin]
Claire: Being a woman is hard work.

…

David [to Claire]: Would you rather have dinner with David or Virginia?

…

Claire: You’re dreaming. This is just a game. You have to wake up to reality.
Virginia: You like this game too. We weren’t close before. Virginia brought us closer.
Claire: No. Laura’s death brought us closer.

…

Virginia [to Claire]: During dinner at your house I realized I was falling in love with you. You were right. It was better to end it. But at tennis when you said, “I miss Virginia”, it all came rushing back. I missed her too.

…

Claire: I’m sorry, I can’t do this.
David [as Virginia with an erection]: Why not?
Claire: You’re a man!

…

Liz [David’s mother after David had been struck by a car and was in the hospital]: You should know something first…David, for some reason, was found dressed as a woman.
Gilles: As a woman?
Mother: He was wearing a skirt and a wig.
Claire [feigning shock]: Really?![/b]

Consider:

13-year-old Gunther Strobbe grows up surrounded by alcohol, trash and his completely useless father and uncles. Slowly but surely, he’s being prepared for the same hapless life. Can he defy his destiny?

Dasein anyone?

And isn’t that really what it is all about? We come into a particular world at particular time and in a particular place and are predisposed to acquire “a sense of self” that is crammed into our heads by all the folks around us. They choose who and what we are for us. Which is not to say that this is how we will always be. Only that there is just no getting around the fact that this is how we all start out.

And then when you start out embedded smack dab in the middle of the Strobbe brothers – “born losers” – there is only really one way to go: up.

Here the meaning of the expression “working class hellhole” takes on an entirely new [and even more bizarre] meaning.

In fact, class is written all over this one. It seems [at times] the more sophisticated among us are meant only to gawk at these “morons” as we might at the human monstrosities in a carnival freak show. Things just sort of “happen” to these folks. Not a whole lot of thought is put into, well, any of it. Glory here revolves around nude bike races and beer guzzling contests.

And yet [from time to time] there are glimpses of heartfelt interactions that enable us [or some of us] to connect the dots to our own lives. Those “human all too human” parts – moments when you recognize the meaning of the expression “different strokes for different folks”.

Anyway, there will always be the part where the world into which we are born shapes and molds us more or less than we are able to shape and to mold the world into which we are born. Sometimes the gap is enormous, other times too close to call.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Misfortunates
trailer: youtu.be/lrYi4kYc-fA

THE MISFORTUNATES [De Helaasheid Der Dingen] 2009
Written in part and directed by Felix van Groeningen

Gunther [as an adult in a voiceover]: I was an author even if that sounds ridiculous. I was the author of an unnoticed collection of poems published in the year blankety-blank by a crummy publisher. As a result, I wasn’t, in fact, an author at all. From the publishers to which I had sent the manuscript of my latest masterpiece, all I received were standard letters of rejection. What did they know? I had to write and I’d keep on writing until I became an author. My day would come. It had to come.

Been there, done that. But, no, it still hasn’t come.

[b]Gunther [voiceover]: I lived in a strange place. A godforsaken place where once a year real men shaved their legs, dressed as women and then partied for three days and three nights. I was forced to forego the annual purification ritual until I was able to call myself a real man. Or, rather, was able to call myself a real Strobbe.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: I was 13 and was irrevocabnly destined to become like them. I, too, as a young member of the Stobbe tribe, would defend my name with honor.

…

Beefcake [to the repo man about to take away his mother’s television set]: …but in order to call yourself a repo man, you have to be an enormous bastard or you’d never be able to do your job!!

…

Gunther [voiceover]: The repo man’s visit was thanks to Beefcake’s gambling. He’s rather naively thought that slot machines had been designed by alturists. Calling Beefcake a born loser may be going too far. On the other hand, he never won a single bet, contest or game. Never ever.

…

Lowie: Mom, what are you doing?!
Mom [of the repo man]: I can’t give him a dirty TV.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: The TV was gone. Everyone agreed it was Beefcake’s fault. So he’s been instructed to come up with a solution. [/b]

Pity their Iranian neighbors: Roy Orbison was on.

Gunther [voiceover]: And thus, with a quickie against the wall of the cafe Las Vegas my father unwittingly brought his life as a bachelor to an abrupt end. 42 weeks later, he was in the Las Vegas when the telephone rang and my father heard that he has a son…27 years after I was born, I made the same stupid mistake as my father.

Stupidity passed one down through the generations as it were.

[b]Gunther [as a child]: Dad, I’d like to board at school during the week. May I?
Dad [staring angrily at him]: What’s this crap about boarding? What’s that all about? I bust my balls for you. I do my best, but it’s never good enough. First your mother and now you. You’re a little traitor, that’s what you are. And that filthy whore. I always knew she was a filthy whore.
[he points his finger at him ominously]
Dad: And you are the son of a filthy whore. That’s what you are.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: The bigger I grew the smaller everything seemed. I got fed up with Franky. But he, or rather his father, beat me to it.
Franky [whose family inhabits the upper middle class]: Dad says I’m not allowed with you anymore.
Gunther: How come?
Franky: He says your father is crazy and your whole family is scum.
Gunther: And my mother abandoned me, Franky. Didn’t your dad tell you that, too?
Franky: Don’t blame me. It’s my dad, honestly. He says you’ll teach me how to smoke, drink, steal…
Gunther: I’m not blaming you. But I don’t know if you know much about us. If your dad thinks he knows the Stobbes so well, he must know that the Stobbes all pull together.
Franky: What?
Gunther [ominously]: No one lays a finger on a Strobbe. We’re a bit old-fashioned as far as that is concerned. Family honor and stuff. You’ll understand when Uncle Petrol punches you in the face! And your father will be dealt with too. No one calls my father crazy!
[he shoves Franky roughly to the ground][/b]

Actually, Dad doesn’t react quite that way at all. Not after the cops show up.

[b]Gunther [voiceover]: It was obvious. Poems wouldn’t pay for nurseries. Doing unwanted work to pay for the existence of an unwanted child…there was a certain logic to it, when you thought about it.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: Unlike a car, the train travels past the world’s rear. You only see the decay from a railroad track. No vehicle gives you a more honest impression of a country than a train. Look at our gardens and pigeon coops, our sheds. See our underwear drying on the line. Look at our garden gnomes, our celery, our leeks, our verandas and our brick barbecues. See how the cows gradually give way to brick monsters which those with the bank’s approval but no taste have plumped down in the Flemish countryside. Take the train and see how, frozen to the spot, marble and granite stand next to the track, bored and covered in dust, providing our loved ones with a final resting place.[/b]

Who would have ever figured that coming from a Stobbe.

[b]Gunther [voiceover]: It occured to me again how beautiful things get destroyed…or left our village.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: There are two people I hate. Two women. One gave birth to me, the other was carrying my offspring. You could say there was a connection between them, but that’s probably just an impression. One’s mind is confused when one is about to stop being a son and start becoming a father.

…

Father [to Gunther after a social worker comes around]: You’re betraying your own family! You’re betraying you’re own family! You’re betraying your own blood!
Mother: It was me! I called that woman! It was me who called that woman!! IT WAS ME!!!

…

Gunther [voiceover]: Once he calmed down, he was overcome by shame. He opened the phone book and phoned a rehab clinic. Then he put my name down for boarding school. “Son”, he mumbled,“it’s better this way. Until I’m better.”

…

Father [to Gunther as a child]: You’re a Strobbe. But you’re different…[/b]

No, not really.

Gunther [voiceover]: There was a slight chance the baby would be born dead. Or would turn out to be black. In both cases, I would find it hard to hide my delight.

Nope, neither one.

[b]Gunther [voiceover]: Life had been passed on, like a baton in an eternal relay race, the reason for which no one knows, but in which everyone clings to their misfortunes.

…

Wife: This baby chose to be with us. Babies choose their parents and not the other way around. This little man chose us.
Gunther: So you think kids choose their parents?
Wife: Yes.
Gunther [incredulously]: What a load of crap.

…

Gunther [voiceover]: You’re always a bastard when you abandon a woman and her kid. But that’s because you weren’t enough of a bastard to leave her before you had made her pregnant. [/b]

Cue Gunther reading an acceptance letter from a book publisher. And then up on the screen…

5 novels later

Society and sex. Love and lust.

And then [cinematically] again and again and again and again and again.

Is there really anything new here?

No, not for the particularly jaded and cynical among us. But for all of those “coming of age” in an age that is saturated with sex [often disguised as love]…this might aid and abet them. Especially if they are “coming of age” as a homosexual.

This is a film that revolves around a lesbian relationship directed by a man based on a graphic novel written by a woman:

The book’s author Julie Maroh was very supportive of the film’s production and praised Abdellatif Kechiche with his originality; however, she wasn’t pleased with the sex scenes and felt that they failed to capture the lesbian heart of the story.

There is also the part played by philosophy here:

The main characters refer to and discuss the writings of Sartre; particularly “Dirty Hands” and “Existentialism is a Humanism”.

Teen angst meets existential angst?

In some ways the characters here are just part and parcel of the “youth culture” that flourishes throughout the post-modern industrial world. But in other ways they are considerably more sophisticated, intriguing, exceptional. And here at least the part where the personal and the political intertwine is explored with a bit more sophistication.

One thing however becomes abundantly clear: that homosexual relationships can become just as fucked up as heterosexual relationships. There’s just no getting around the fact that we are human-all-too-human. Especially this part: emotionally we love one [or love one more] but sexually we want many.

This doesn’t stop being the case [for most] just because they are homosexual. Or bisexual.

And then the part about class. And being “cultured”. Adèle is a product of the working class, Emma a product of the upper middle class. One is content to be ordinary, a nursery school teacher, the other intent only on being creative, artistic…an outlier.

Look for the prosthetic vaginas. No, really, that’s what they used for the oral sex scenes.

Oh, and it goes without saying that all of the characters here are at one with “the beautiful people”.

IMDb

[b]The actresses only read the script once. Abdellatif Kechiche insisted that they forget what the script said line for line, and instead asked them to improvise their scenes and really let their actions and words come out naturally and as unforced as possible.

There was controversy surrounding Abdellatif Kechiche and his work methods. It was revealed that he would do hundreds of takes for small scenes to achieve the desired realism of the story, and his intense directorial style was borderline abusive. Both actresses stated that the film looks so real because Kechiche pushed them to their breaking point, and that they were really struggling. They also said that they did not wish to work with him again.

For the first time ever the Palme d’Or at Cannes was also officially awarded to two of the actors. Usually only the director gets the distinction.

One of the sex scenes took 10 days to film.

Both Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos have said that their on-screen relationship was real to some extent, and that they are very close friends as a result. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Is_t … est_Colour
trailer: youtu.be/Y2OLRrocn3s

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR [La Vie d’Adèle - Chapitres 1 et 2] 2013
Written in part and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

[b]Valentin [at school]: Say something.
Adèle: I feel like I’m faking. Faking everything.
Valentin [of Tomas]: If he’s getting you so worked up…
Adèle: No, it’s me. He’s not the problem. I’m missing something.

…

Teacher: “Little” is a word that comes back over and over in the play. It’s a word that stigmatizes childhood, and powerlessness too. Childhood is a time when we’re helpless. Not big enough, not mature enough, not strong enough. Antigone is a child. She’s still little. “Too little,” as she says. But she refuses to be little anymore. Not that day. It’s the day she will say no. The day she says no, the day she dies. What we have here is the perfect example of tragedy. Tragedy is unavoidable. It’s what we cannot escape, no matter what. It concerns eternity, It concerns what is timeless. It concerns the mechanism, the essence of humankind.

…

Older man in a gay bar to Adele: Love has no gender. Take whoever loves you. Whatever makes you happy. Who cares? True love. Even if we die tomorrow, who cares?

…

Adèle: Why is it called Fine Arts? Are there arts that are ugly?
Emma: No ugly arts. Some can be ugly. But it’s subjective. There are no Ugly Arts schools though.
Adèle: Why not?
Emma: That’s a good point. At the time of the Impressionists, everyone who was rejected from the Salon for beautiful paintings and everyone was considered “ugly” went to the Salon of…
Adèle: …the ugly?
Emma: The best artists.

…

Emma: I rarely do portraits. I pick a detail. And I use it again after. Differently. It can be a skin fold by the lips or an emotion in the eyes. “The mysterious weakness of man’s face”. Know that?
Adèle: I don’t think so.
Emma: Sartre. Know him?
Adèle: Yeah, but I never heard that. I tried his essays but I didn’t understand them. I prefer his plays. You know Dirty Hands?
[Emma nods]
Adèle: Like it?
Emma: Love it. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Good introduction. The idea behind Sartre is that existence precedes essense. We are born, we exist. And then we define ourselves by our actions. It gives us a great responsibility.
Adèle: I think I read it. But I didn’t understand it. Maybe I’m bad at philosophy, but for me, existence, essence is like the chicken and the egg. I don’t think we can ever know what came first.
Emma: None of that stuff matters much. He started an intellectual revolution that set our entire generation free. He said we can choose our lives without any higher principle.

…

Valentin: What the hell?
Adèle: Why did tell everyone we went to a gay bar? Why the fuck would you do that?
Valentin: It’s not the end of the world…
Adèle: It is! They all think I’m a lesbian, eat pussy. She thinks I checked out her ass!

…

Emma: I love oysters.
Adèle: Really? The texture alone grosses me out.
Emma: That the best part.
Adèle: They’re like little balls of snot. Or big balls of snot.
Emma: They remind me of something else.

…

Emma: Something to say?
Adèle: I don’t know.
Emma: What?
Adèle: I wanted to know, when was the first time you tasted…
Emma: Tasted a sausage?
Adèle: Tasted a girl.
Emma: A girl? You mean kiss or taste?

…

Emma: Enjoying philosophy?
Adèle: I love it. It’s incredibly enriching. Very interesting. Very deep. Orgasm precedes essence.

…

Emma [to Adèle]: There’s a fad in painting. You have to follow it. I don’t care about fads. I don’t give a shit. People only think in terms of business. They have no…I don’t know how to explain it…they have not taste. They just have no taste.

…

Emma: Who is he?
Adèle: Who?
Emma: The guy who dropped you off.
Adèle: He’s just a co-worker.
Emma: Do you think I’m stupid?

…

Emma: Why are you lying?
Adèle: I’m not lying.
Emma: Then why are you crying?
Adèle: I’m not crying.
Emma: Then why the tears?

…

Emma: You’re a little slut. A little whore. You get fucked, right? You like that. You suck him off in his car and then kiss me? You dare kiss me. You dare touch me and look at me? And then you lie, you talk bullshit, you talk crap!!
Adèle: I don’t know how to ask for forgiveness.
Emma: There is no forgiveness! I never want to see your face again! Pack your bags and get out!![/b]

This is some of the greatest acting you are ever likely to see. In other words, you’d swear they were not acting at all.

[Adèle and Emma meet again after 3 years]
Adèle: And sexually? Do you enjoy it with Lise?
Emma [groping for an answer]: It’s…
Adèle: Lousy?
Emma: It’s not lousy, but it’s…
Adèle: Boring?
Emma: I don’t know, Adèle, it’s not like with you.
Adèle [after a long pause]: I miss you. I miss touching each other, seeing each other, breathing in each other’s scent.
[she takes Emma’s hand]
Adèle: I want you. All the time. No one else. I miss everything. Let me touch you…
[she licks Emma’s fingers]
Emma [after a time]: Stop.
Adèle: Don’t say you don’t want to. I don’t believe it.
[she puts Emma’s hand on her crotch]
Adèle: Touch!
[but after a while…]
Emma: Stop it. I can’t.
Adèle: Forgive me. I don’t know…it’s beyond my control.
Emma; You’re forgiven.
Adèle: You won’t see me anymore?
Emma: No.
Adèle: You haven’t forgiven me.
Emma: Yes, I have.
Adèle: Then you don’t love me anymore.
[Emma shakes her head to confirm it: no she doesn’t]
Adèle: Are you sure?
Emma: Yes. I’m with someone else now. You know that. But I feel an infinite tenderness for you. I always will. My whole life.

One of those teeny tiny films in which the director, the screen writers and the actors are all the same two guys.

It’s a “horror” movie. But the best kind: psychological down to the bone.

In other words, nothing really “supernatural”. Instead the “terror” revolves around this: the realization that it is not altogether out of the realm of possibility that you might bump into someone like this yourself.

And we all know there are any number of truly bizarre ways in which we can terrorize each other without being ghosts or gobblins. Or vampires or zombies.

Here of course there are generally two kinds of “monsters”: The sociopath and the psychopath. One is just basically intent on inflicting pain [and fear] on you, while the other is acting out of a mental affliction that may not ever actually be understood. It’s hard to say which experience is the more horrific. Why? Because with neither is there any real hope of “reasoning” him out of doing whatever terrible things he has planned.

And here, even though it all unfolds up on a mountain, it’s not in some remote cabin out in the woods somewhere — a million miles from another living soul. So it makes the context [and the horror] all the more plausible. At least it did for me. Also, you really can imagine someone wanting to do what Josef is doing “for his unborn son”. In other words, you can imagine yourself falling for it.

The bottom line is that Josef really, really, really comes to embody creepiness. On one level you can go along with what he is saying. But increasingly you begin to suspect that something is really “off” with him. Then it’s only a matter of finding out just how “off” he is. That and wondering whether or not Aaron will get out of it alive.

This is [supposedly] the first film of a Creep trilogy.

IMDb

[b]Since the movie was based on a series of conversations between Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass, most of it was improvised. This led to a lot of scenes being shot and result and screened in front of their peers which is what pushed this psychological black comedy into a psychological horror after the advice of their friends and has at least three other alternate endings.

When Josef points out the “heart-shaped” pool of water, the overall rock formation closely resembles a skull, with an eye socket to the upper left and the rounded edges proportionate to what a skull would look like if the heart shape were the nasal cavity. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(2014_film
trailer: youtu.be/hYx5R6kbJTQ

CREEP [2014]
Written and directed by Patrick Brice

[b]Aaron [voiceover while driving a car]: Alright, we are now leaving the flatlands and we are heading towards the mountaintop. Not sure who I’m meeting. The ad said, “$1,000 for the day, filming services. Discretion is appreciated.” Whatever that means.

…

Aaron [vocieover]: So here’s a thought. What if this is just some 40-something who is sitting alone in her apartment waiting for some young, handsome boy to come up the hill and give her rubdowns…and whisper sweet nothings?[/b]

We suspect that’s not it.

[b]Josef [meeting Aaron]: Oh my God. Oh my God. This is going to be a good day. You have a really nice, kind face…Trust me, this is not going to be anything weird at all.

…

Josef: I am a cancer survivor. I had cancer of the liver, spread to the lungs. It looked pretty bad. They gave me the chemo. I knocked it out. It immediately went into remission. It was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, two months ago, I started getting dizzy spells…and these sort of weird cognitive backfirings. Went back to see the doctor. Brain tumor the size of a baseball here.
Aaron: Oh no…
Josef: That’s inoperable. So they gave me about two to three months to live. I’m hoping I beat it, you know? And the power of positive thinking…maybe, who knows? But in case I don’t, I’m married. My beautiful wife Angela is pregnant with our first child. Have you ever seen the film My Life?
Aaron: No.
Josef: It’s a beuatiful film. Michael Keaton has cancer in the film and he make a video diary of himself for his unborn son…I just want you to walk with me. I don’t know exactly what I am going to do. I want you to document me how I am.

…

Josef: You ready for this.
Aaron: Okay, let’s do it.
Josef: All right. I’m going to get into the tub.
Aaron [after a long pause]: In the tub?

…

Josef [in the tub]: I just can’t help thinking: “Why wait?” You know? Because…I could just end it right now. I could, you know.
[he sinks down under the water]
Aaron [worried]: Josef? Hey. Josef. Josef!..[/b]

Josef bursts up out of the water. A joke he explains. To lighten the mood. Next up: Peachfuzz.

[b]Josef: What’s really amazing is that there was about two seconds there after you were done being scared where it looked like you wanted to kill me.
Aaron: No, I was just…it was…
Josef: I don’t take it personally. I think it was a visceral reaction, you know? A defense thing. But…but there is an animal in you.

…

Josef: I have an ax back at the house.
Aaron: Yeah. I saw it.
Josef: Can I ask you a question? Answer me honestly?
Aaron: Okay.
Josef: When you saw that ax out in front of the house was there a small part of you that thought I might kill you with it?

…

Aaron [starting to grasp that all is not as it seems]: Josef, do you remember how to get back?
Josef: No. I don’t.
Aaron: It’s just we’ve taken a lot of forks in the road and switchbacks that…I haven’t been keeping track, so…
Josef: I haven’t either. But that’s…I mean…that’s back there, man. We gotta go forward.
Aaron: Okay…
Josef: We can’t find the miracle if, you know, we gotta rope attached to us.

…

Josef [after Aaron wants to leave]: One drink, Aaron. One drink and I’ll send you on your merry way. Please.
Aaron: Okay. One drink.

…

Josef: Are you leaving?
Aaron: Yeah. I’m going.
Josef [after a pause]: I lied to you.
Aaron:About what?
Josef: About Peachfuzz.

…

Josef: Aaron, if I tell you something will you promise not to tell a living soul…I need to get something off my chest…

…

Josef [to Aaron with the camera off]: I did something really bad. About four years ago the internet stated to slow down at out house. Spoke to a guy I knew at work who said maybe the browser’s history was full. I went home and I opened uo the internet. Aaron, such unspeakable things I saw. Pornography…mostly animal pornography. There’s only two people who use that internet. Me and my wife, Angela. And I was not looking at animal pornography, Aaron. I confronted Angela. She flat out denied it. What could I say? I knew it was her. This lie drove a wedge between us and we began to drift apart. One weekend I said we should come up to the cabin. Right here. But I was called back to work and I left Angela here by herself. The thing is I wasn’t really late for work. I went down the street to the 99 cent store. There I found a mask. It was a wolf. Three hours later I came back to the house, I put the mask on. I broke into the back window. Angela was asleep. I tied her up…at which point she awoke. At which point we proceded to have have ravenous, animalistic sexual intercourse. I’d never seen her so happy. I have to admit it didn’t feel terrible on my end. I escaped through the window and left her there tied up. When I came back the next morning as myself, I asked her how her night was. She said it was fine with a casual smile. We never spoke of it. We went home and in the weeks that followed the internet got back up to speed. Aaron, I raped my own wife.

…

Aaron: Have you seen my car keys?

…

Angela [on the phone]: I’m sorry, who is this?
Aaron: Aaron. Your husband hired me.
Angela: What?!
Aaron: Your husband hired me to film him. For the cancer.
Angela [ominously]: Where are you right now, Aaron?
Aaron: We’re at your house in Crestline.
Angela: You’re where? Okay, never mind. Listen, I’m gonna recommend that you go ahead and just leave right now.
Aaron: What the fucks going on?!!
Angela: Nothing. You just go ahead and exist the house. You will be fine.
Aaron: Lady, I’m trying to leave but I can’t fine my fucking car keys!
Angela: Okay, that’s fine. Just give me the address of where you are and just walk out of there right now. Just keep walking, okay?
Aaron: Am I in danger right now?
Angela: My brother has problems…
Aaron: Brother? Josep’s your brother? But…That’s…Your brother has cancer?
Angela: Listen to me, Aaron…you have to get out of that house right now.

…

Josef [to Aaron scrambling to get away]: Death.
[pause]
Josef: It’s coming.
[long pause]
Josef: There’s nothing we can do.
[long pause]
Josef [weeping]: I don’t want to die, Aaron…I don’t want to die. Oh, Aaron. Oh, God.

…

Aaron: I talked to Angela, man…
[Josef bolts away]

…

Aaron [to Josef wearing the Peachfuzz wolf mask and blocking the door]: Josef, please let me go. Are you gonna let me go?
[Josef shakes his head]
Aaron: Why are you doing this to me? Are you just trying to scare me?
[Josef nods his head]
Aaron: Okay, look. Well, I’m terrified, okay? You won. Now, will you please step aside and let me go?
[Josef starts to undulate his body and to growl like a wolf]
Aaron: Stop it. Stop it! Stop it!! STOP IT!!!

…

Aaron [to the camera]: A little context here…After our scuffle, I don’t know where he went. He just ran off. I had to get my car towed. And now I’m home. And, you know, I thought this was over. I was just writing it off as a weird thing that happened. And lo and behold a few days later I got this [a video of Josef burying something in the woods] in the mail. Which means he knows my address. That’s a little disconcerting. I’m kinda having trouble interpreting it. I guess he’s supposed to be digging a grave. Those three bags. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a body or something…chopped up. Is that supposed to be me?

…

Josef sends him a package. Aaron opens it and pulls out a meat cleaver and another video…

Josef [on the video]: So, just to clear the air I do want to apoligize for that last video I sent you. It was a little manipulative and a bit of an emotional response…and I’m sorry about that. But in all fairness I wasn’t quite in my right head because, well, you did drug me. I found the empty Benydryl bottle in the house. And I gotta say, pretty cool move. So the way I see it is tat for tat, no hard feelings. But just in case, I thought I’d send you this little gift. To clear the air between us. I assume by know you have the knife and the video you are watching. But if you haven’t found the third element, I’d encourage you to press pause now…and dig a little deeper. [/b]

Aaron pauses the video and digs a little deeper into the box. It’s a stuffed toy. A baby wolf.

Josef [on the video]: I love wolves because they love deeply, but they don’t know how to express it, and they’re often very violent and, quite frankly, murder the things that they love, and inside of the wolf is this beautiful heart. And yeah it’s misguided, and yeah occasionally it murders things. and this little wolf was so cute, it reminded me of you, honestly, You know, that moment I scared you in the woods. and it was - There was murder in your eyes, but it was like, it was baby murder, you’re not ready to accept that yet, and I want to encourage you to embrace your inner wolf, so take the wolf and enjoy it, and more importantly, take the knife, and don’t be afraid to murder it, because when you stick a knife in something, and you gut it and you really dig inside, I don’t know man, there’s all this beautiful stuff. And um…I got a little surprise for you in there. See ya soon, Buddy!

So, he tears into the stuffed toy: Time to call the cops.
And then one more video. In order to reveal “the truth”.

Josef [on a video…the last]: …this is my attempt to be real and truthful and honest with you. The truth is…I…am…the truth is this is hard to talk about. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve always done this. I’ve been pretending my whole life. And there was this phase where I thought, “hey, I’ll just be an actor, because actors pretend”…But it did nothing for me because it wasn’t real…So I saw doctors and some of them thought “hey, he’s crazy” and some thought not. And there were medications but none of that helped…I don’t have any friends…I’ve burned every bridge. My sisters, my parents. I have nothing and I need somebody to talk to…

So he invites Aaron to Lake Gregory to be that friend.

[b]Aaron [to the camera after viewing Josef’s bizarre/chilling video]: What the hell am I supposed to do with this?

…

Aaron [at Lake Gregory to the camera]: Alright, Josef, I’m here. You got me. But know that I’m filming this and my phone is set to speed dial to 911.[/b]

Let’s just put it this way: It’s not enough.

Perhaps [ultimately] a salute to this fellow: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus

Not at all what one might call a linear exploration into human reality. But then human reality itself does not often lend itself to being understood in this way.

And then there’s this part:

This project was originally conceived to be a series of stand-alone short films. The only way Guy Maddin was able to receive enough funding was to string some of them together into a feature.

So you reconfigure them all into another reality altogether. One that is described as a “romantic mystery comedy-drama” film.

Exactly: Whatever that means.

This film is also described as a “grand ode to lost cinema”. Which is to suggest [technically and otherwise] a fond remembrance of movies as they once were made. But since I know almost nothing about this [and don’t particularly care to] it is all rather over my head.

But maybe not yours.

Also, it’s one of those films so extraordinary to look at it almost doesn’t matter that you don’t know what the fuck is going on. Or even if you think that you do. Just watch it.

Or think of it instead as a visceral, primordial fever-dream-within-a-dream unfolding such that you might at least make the attempt to give it a meaning through, say, your own life?

Or just imagine it as though someone were actually able to film the id.

As one reviewer put it:

Preposterous and Playful, Postmodern Surrealism, is a Stab at Defining the Work of Director Guy Maddin. His Influences may be David Lynch, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Silent Movies, Jackson Pollock, and the (Kitch)en Sink.

Besides, if nothing else, you can finally learn how to take a bath.

Finally, check this out: screenprism.com/insights/article … or-guy-mad

IMDb

Each sequence of The Forbidden Room is based on reviews and summaries of “lost” films, mostly from America in the early to mid-20th century. These films were destroyed intentionally or by natural degradation of the original film stock, and will likely never be seen again. Guy Maddin realized the only way he’d be able to see these lost movies was to make them himself.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forbi … (2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/8YQw6KLJGf8

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM [2015]
Written and directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson

Meet Marv. Marv pops up on the screen from time to time. He more or less ties the narrative together. Well, sort of.

[b]Marv: Hello. I’m Marv. Today, we’re gonna discuss baths - more specifically, how to take one. Baths have been around for a long time. The ancient Romans built fancy ones, like Caracalla. In the Middle Ages, the were called “stews”… 'cause you had to be stewed in order to take one. They were open to both sexes. Today, the Japanese have bisexual bathing Here in America, we didn’t bathe so much until recently. The Saturday-night bath used to be a ritual. Today, it’s more like every other day, or… even every day. How do I know this? Heh. People have told me, that’s how!

…

Marv: Hey, you know the old joke, “What’s the difference between a woman in a bathtub and a woman in church?” I’ll give you a clue: the woman in church has hope in her soul. Be careful about passing gas when you’re in the bathtub. It doesn’t just go away!

…

Marv: Hey, you ever hear the one about the man who checked into a hotel room and got into the tub and farted? The bellhop heard him and brought him a bottle of beer on a tray. The man said, “Hey, I didn’t order that!” The bellhop said, "You did too! I distinctly heard you say, ‘Bellboy, bring me a bottle of Bud!’

…

Marv: Once you’re done, you wanna dry yourself on a big, fluffy, Turkish towel. The Turks were heavily into baths too, hence the expression “Whoo! It’s like a Turkish bath in here!” Now, you probably want to curl up with a nice book, or maybe get together with a special someone who hopefully will have bathed too in the fairly recent past! Whatever… enjoy. Mmm, that’s what bathing is all about… in spite of what you may have heard to the contrary. Have a nice day! [/b]

“What am I supposed to do?”

It’s an old story. You can live your life like so many others – lives of “quiet desparation” – or you can choose instead to become absorbed in distracting yourself from all that by becoming, among other things, a “hedonist”. Sometimes it’s drugs, sometimes booze, sometimes sex, sometimes food, sometimes rampant consumerism. Or a combination thereof. But always the intent is being completely self-absorbed; and [thus] in distancing yourself from all that makes so many “ordinary lives” nasty, brutish and short.

But…

But then [this being a movie] Something Happens. You reach that fork in the road where you have to choose between becoming more or less like everyone else – burdoned, responsible, sober – or continuing down the path to self-destruction: as oblivious to “normal reality” as you can possibly be.

And this is smack dab in the middle of the Big City: so we know that we are in the midst of the post-modern world.

It’s ultimately about obligations. To family. To yourself. To everyone else.

It’s also about the gap between being or not being “gravelly ill” in a culture where so much comes to revolve around me, myself and I. Suddenly you find yourself dependent on others who may or may not be there for you. Who may or may not want to be there for you.

James does want to be there for his mother [if at times reluctantly] but then there’s that part about “the system”. The one in a Big City hospital for example. The Medical Industrial Complex.

And then the part about death and dying.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_White_(film
trailer: youtu.be/pdw828U3KMY

JAMES WHITE [2015]
Written and directed by Josh Mond

[b]James [to guests]: Hi, um, excuse me everybody. I’m James. I’m going to have to ask all of you to leave just for my mother and I to grieve in peace over my dead father. Is that okay’? I’m sorry. I know it’s a bad time and everyone’s sad, but I’m going to have to ask you all to go.

…

James: Why are we even doing this, Mom? Why are we having a shiva’? You’re not even Jewish. Am I the only one that thinks that it’s crazy? Am I the only one’?

…

James: I need to get out. I need to get out of here.
Gail [mother]: Yes, you do. You need to grow up and get off of my couch.
James: Get off of your couch’? I’ve been living here for four years taking care of you.
Gail: Four years? Two years. Don’t delude yourself. And you haven’t been taking care of me. You’ve been freeloading.
James: That is not right. When you were really sick, and your stem cell transplants, and your steroids, and your moods. Who fought for you? Who ran your errands? I’m your son and that is what I’m supposed to do. And I’m happy to be here because I love you. But I need a break.
Gail [angrily]: That’s all you do, James, is take breaks. You have been there. And you have been amazing at times, but you have got to get your act together.

…

James [to Gail]: Look, Nick is down in Mexico. I am going to go visit him. I am not going to drink. And I am not going to smoke. I’m going to write and I’m going to meditate and I’m going to eat healthy and I’m going to swim and I’m going to work out and I’m going to write about all those feelings that are welled up inside me and when I get back I will get a place and a job but I need to go away. And when I come back I will be ready for life.

…

James [on phone]: Hey, Ma.
Gail: James, I need you to come home.
James: No, I can’t come home yet. I told you, I was still…I was going to be here for a while.
Gail: But I need you. I need you to come home.
James: Why?
Gail: I need you here.
James: Why, can you please tell me why’?
Gail: Because I’m asking you. Okay, please?
James: You have to talk to me, though. You’re crying and you have to please tell me what’s going on before I do this.
Gail: I have to start treatment again. The cancer spread.
James: Shit, okay, I’m going to get on the next flight.

…

Gail: When I wake up in the morning, either you’re here or you’re not here.
James: Mom!
Gail: Your father was never satisfied either. He was selfish, too.

…

James: This is my mother, Gail White. She’s a stage four cancer patient. She’s been going through chemo. She’s been taking steroids. I woke up this morning and she had just left the house.
Gail: I’m Gail White.
Ambulance attendant: Where do you live?
Gail: I live at 434 West 87th Street. Just down there. This is James. This is my son.
James: I’m the one that called, man.
Ambulance attendant: Okay, miss, let me ask you a couple questions. Do you know what year it is?
Gail: It’s 2000.
Ambulance attendant: Do you know who the president is?
Gail: George cock-sucker Bush.

…

James: Miss, that’s my mom in there, Gail White. She’s a patient. She’s a stage four cancer. She woke up, she started pulling out the tubes, and I think she shit herself. Somebody needs to change…
Doctor: Someone will be in there in a second.
James: Do you have any idea about the beds and…
Doctor: We have no beds. She’s not even listed in the computer yet. When somethings available, I’ll let you know.
James: Okay, excuse me, excuse me’? I just said she shit herself. She’s sitting in shit. Can somebody change those sheets, or what do we do about that’?
[the doctor just walks away]
James: Thank you.

…

James: Mom, do you remember what year it is’?
Gail: It’s 2013.
James: Thank God.

…

Nick: I’m right here. I’m right here. You need to relax! You’re scaring us! You’re scaring Jayne. You need to relax!
James: Listen, she may die any day. She is scared to death!

…

James [to Nick]: Dude, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? No one tells me anything! She doesn’t tell me anything! What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?!!

…

Ben: You remind me a lot of me. And your dad, you know. I loved your dad. And I love your mom. And I’m here to help. I want to help. So I’m just going to come right out and say this. Um… I wouldn’t feel comfortable hiring you for anything right now.
James: Yeah. Okay.Yeah. I understand. Um… But I really need this right now.
Ben: Well, if that’s true, then I’m really glad this meeting’s with me and not somebody else. Because if you showed up without an assignment that you were asked to prepare, and the writing sample that you presented like this, you have a gash on your hand and you smell the way that you smell at 10 AM they would’ve stopped you at the elevator. You’re a mess.

…

Gail [to James]: The thing about us is we feel good things way up here, but we feel bad things way way way down there. And we gotta try to remember there’s all this space in between…we gotta to live in there too.

…

James [weeping as his mother lays dying]: Mom, I want you to know that…I’m going to be okay. I promise. I promise that I’m going to be okay. You can go. I love you. I love you. I love you.[/b]

They could have called this one All The Pope’s Men.

After all, in some respects, it’s like a remake of All The President’s Men. Just a different set of scumbags this time around.

For some it was a scandal that shook the world. For others it was the scandal that shook the world. In other words, for some nothing can be more despicable than men of the cloth molesting and raping young children.

And yet that is precisely what these men of the cloth in the Catholic church did. Over and over and over and over again. Not only that but many in the church hierarchy were considerably more rather than less aware of it. And did little or nothing to report it. Let alone stop it.

At least not until it became a scandal.

Of course the other scandal here is how something like this can be turned into a cash cow:

We got two stories here: a story about degenerate clergy, and a story about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry.

And then there’s this part:

In real life, by the time the Boston Globe broke the story of the abuse scandal in Boston, the National Catholic Reporter had already been reporting on abuse within the church for seventeen years while other much bigger news outlets had refused to look at it.

Some will argue that this is not about religion so much as corrupt, institutionalized religion. But to the extent that religion is complicit in sustaining sexual repression stories like this will always surface eventually.

It’s also important to note that through religion many, many, many people earn their living. God is their job. So, aside from the part about God there’s the part about bucks. And the part about politics. And, in Boston, the Catholic Church is everywhere.

IMDb

[b]During an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” director Tom McCarthy said that they built a large set to depict many of the Boston Globe offices where parts of the story takes place. When the reporters depicted in the movie first visited the set, they gravitated to the desks where they had been sitting during the writing of the “Spotlight” piece, and many of them started to re-arrange the items on their desks to the way they had been at the time.

During every break, Mark Ruffalo asked the real Michael Rezendes to say his lines for him.

The real Walter Robinson said, “My persona has been hijacked. If Michael Keaton robbed a bank, the police would quickly have me in handcuffs.”

The real Michael Rezendes said, “Watching Mark Ruffalo re-enact five months of my life was like looking into a fun house mirror.”

At the 88th Academy Awards, Spotlight was up for six awards and won two Oscars. It won the first Oscar presented that night for Best Original Screenplay. Then, after losing in the next four categories it was nominated in (Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Director), it won the final Oscar of the evening for Best Picture.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Zg5zSVxx9JM

SPOTLIGHT [2015]
Written in part and directed by Tom McCarthy

[b]Marty: Did everyone read Eileen McNamara column this weekend?
Helen: That’s the Geoghan case?
Marty: Yeah, what’s the folo on that?
Ben: It…It’s a column, what kind of folo are you thinking?
Marty: Uh… well apparently this priest molested kids in 6 different parishes over the last 30 years and the attorney for the victims, a Mr…
Eileen: Garabedian.
Marty: Thanks Eileen, Mr Garabedian says Cardinal Law found out about it 15 years ago and did nothing.
Paul: Yeah, I think that attorney is a bit of a crank, and The Church dismissed the claim.
Eileen: He-said, she-said.
Marty: Whether Mr Garabedian is a ‘crank’ or not, he says he has documents that prove that Cardinal knew.
Ben: As I understand that those documents are under seal.
Marty: Okay, but the fact remains a Boston priest abused 80 kids, we have a lawyer who says he can prove Law knew about it and we’ve written all of… uh… 2 stories in the last 6 months. This strikes me as an essential story to a local paper, I think the very least we have to go through those documents.
Paul: How would you like to do that?
Marty: Oh uh, I don’t know what the laws are here, but in Florida we would go to court.
Ben: You wanna sue the Church?
Marty: Technically we wouldn’t sue the Church, we’d file a motion to lift the seal on the documents.
Ben: The Church will read that as us suing them. So will everybody else.
Marty: Good to know.

…

Marty: I’d like to challenge the protective order in the Geoghan case.
Publisher: You want to sue the Catholic Church?
Marty: We’re just filing the motion, but… Yes.
Publisher: You think it’s that important?
Marty: Yes, I do.
Publisher: Because obviously the Church will fight us very hard on this. Which won’t go unnoticed by our subscriber base, 53% of them are catholic.
Marty: I think they’ll be interested.

…

Robby: You are familiar with the Geoghan case?
Eric: Sure, 80 plaintiffs. All of them individual cases, Garabedian must be swimming.
Robby: Yeah, any allegation against Cardinal Law?
Eric: Yeah, it’s tricky. This is what you need to understand, these are shitty cases. Statute of limitation is only 3 years, and most of these victims don’t come forward till long after that.
Sacha: Why is that?
Eric: Well they’re kids, you know? Guilt, shame…And most of these kids come from tough neighbourhood, nobody wants to admit this kind of thing, so, uh, you’re screwed on the time moment, and even if you argue your way around that, the charitable immunity statute caps damages at 20 grand.
Sacha: 20 grand, for molesting a child?
Eric: That is the way the system is set up, yes. The Church is tough, so your best shot is to try this cases in the press.

…

Mitchell: The Church thinks in centuries, Mr. Rezendes. Do you think your paper has resources to take that on?
Mike: Yeah, I do. But if you don’t mind me asking…do you?

…

Mike: So why are you here today?
Robby: Going over this clips of Saviano.
Mike: Yeah, Ben and Steve thinks it’s a dead end. They gave me a bunch of crap about it at the game.
Robby: Yeah, Ben emailed me.
Mike: He did?
Robby: Yeah…he said we should let it go.
Mike: What do you wanna do?
Robby: We bring Saviano in.
Mike: So, just ignore those guys?
Robby: I think we got to start ignoring everybody on this one.
Mike: I’m good at that.

…

Cardinal Law: If I can be of any help, Marty, don’t hesitate to ask. I find that the city flourishes when its great institutions work together.
Marty: Thank you. Personally I’m of the opinion that for a paper to best perform its function, it really needs to stand alone.

…

Cardinal Law [handing Marty a wrapped package]: Little gift, Marty. Think of it as a Cardinals guide to the city of Boston.[/b]

Marty unwraps it in the car. It’s a book: CATHOLIC CHURCH CATECHISM. Marty is Jewish.

[b]Phil: First of all, let me say thank you for having me in today. And I want you to know that you’ll have the full cooperation of my organization, SNAP.
Mike: How many members are in your organization Phil?
Phil: We had 11, at our last chapter meeting…no, 10, Karen just moved.
Sacha: You had a woman in your group?
Phil: Of course there was a woman, they don’t discriminate, not when it comes to abuse. And this has nothing to do with being gay. What this is, is priests using the collar to rape kids. Kids, boys and girls.

…

Phil: I was eleven. And I was preyed upon by father David Holly in Wester. And I don’t mean prayed for, I mean preyed upon.

…

Phil [to the Spotlight reporters]: Ok, well let me tell you…when you are poor kid from a poor family, religion counts for a lot. And when a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal. He ask you to collect a hymnals, or take out a trash, you feel special. It’s like God asking for help. Maybe it’s a little weird when he tells you a dirty joke but now you got a secret together. So you go along. Then he shows you a porno mag. And then you go along, and you go along, and you go along. Until one day he asks you to jerk him off or give him a blowjob. And so you go along with that too. Because you feel trapped, because he has groomed you. How do you say no to a God, right?

…

Phil [to the Spotlight reporters]: You guys gotta understand. This is big. This is not just Boston, this is a whole country, it’s a whole world. And it goes right up to the Vatican.
Mike: Do you have any proof ot that, Phil?
Phil: No, not yet. But think about it, there are so many of them. How else could they have hidden it sor so long?
Mike: So many what?
Phil: Priests! Priests! I know 13 right here in Boston.
Robby: You know 13 priest in Boston who have molested children?
Phil: Yeah, why do you keep repeating everything I say?
Robby: I just like to clarify things.
Phil: Maybe you should’ve clarified it 5 years ago… when I sent you all of this stuff, it’s all right here!!!

…

Mitchell [to Mike, regarding Patrick]: He’s one of the lucky ones. He’s still alive.

…

Richard [on the phone]: Look Mike, the Church wants us to believe that it’s just a few bad apples. It’s much bigger problem than that.
Mike: How much bigger, Richard?
Richard: Well, based on the research I would classify it as a recognizable psychiatric phenomenon.

…

Mike: Sipes said the all targets the same kind of kid. Low income families, absentee fathers broken homes. A guy like Geoghan goes after boys not because he prefers them but because they are more ashamed, less likely to talk. And these guys are predators, Robby. I talked to Sipe. Said he’s seen dozens of them in '60 in Seton. He called it a “phenomenon”.

…

Eric: Look, I told you guys, these are tough cases. Most of these folks, theyjust want some acknowledgement of what happened. We got them a sit down with the Bishop and a little dough, and that’s the best they can hope for.
Robby: Well, certainly, the best that priest could hope for.
Eric: No, the Church promises to take the priest out of circulation.
Robby: And did you follow up on that?

…

Ben: So this was all under the table.
Sacha: There’s no paper trail, at all. The victim has to sign the confidentiality agreement to get the settlement. The lawyer takes the third and the Church sweeps it under the rug.
Mike: Jesus, it’s a freaking racket.
Ben: It’s more complicated than that. Macleish has got the duty to client to get the best deal he can.
Sacha: Sure, but how many victims do you represent and profit from, before you say someting?
Mike: Garabedian would say none. And that’s why he’s taking these cases to Court. Because he wants people to know about this.

…

Robby: The Cardinal is in the corner, if you’re so inclined.
Marty: We’ve met.
Robby: Really? Did he mentioned the suit?
Marty: No, but he did give me a copy of cathecism.
Robby: Yeah, well, the Cardinal is not known for his subtlety. During the Porter investigation, he literally called down the power of God on the Globe.
Marty: How’d that play out?
Mike: Well, a week later, our editor broke his leg skiing.

…

Mitchell: Your new editor, he’s a Jew, right?
Mike: That’s right, yeah.
Mitchell: Well, see he comes in and suddenly everybody is interested in the Catholic Church. You know why?
Mike: No.
Mitchell: Because it takes the outsider. Like me. I’m Armenian. How many Armenians
do you know in Boston?
Mike: Steve Kurkjian, works at The Globe.
Mitchell. That’s two.

…

Mitchell [to Mike]: This city, these people…making the rest of us feel like we don’t belong. But they’re no better than us. Look at how they treat their children. Mark my words, Mr. Rezendes. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.

…

Robby: Listen, Jimmy. You want to be on the right side of this.
Jim: This is the Church, you’re talking about Robby. Look around, these are good people, done a lot of good for this city. Enjoy the party.

…

Matt: I’ve been through a lot these now. “Sick leave” isn’t the only designation they use when they take one of these priests out of the circulation. They use slew of terms. Absent on leave…On assignment…Emergency response.
Mike: They have a word for everything, these guys.
Sacha: Except rape.

…

Richard Sipes [on the phone]: I think that if you really want to understand the crisis you need to start with the celibacy requirement. That was my first major finding. Only 50% of the clergy are celibat. Now, most of them are having sex with other adults. But the fact remains that this creates a culture of secrecy that tolerates and even protects pedophiles.
Sacha: So you believe the Church is aware of the extent of this crisis?
Richard: Well, absolutely. After the first major scandal in Louisiana Tom Doyle, the secretary candidacy for papal nuncio co-opted a report warning that pedophile priests, were billion dollar liability. That was in 1985.
Mike: Who saw that report, anyone from the catholic hierarchy?
Richard: Sure. Doyle tried to introduce the report at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In fact, Cardinal Law initially helped to fund the report. But then he backed out and he shelved it.

…

Mike: We think we have 13 priests… in Boston, that fits this pattern, which would be a very, very big story. Does that sound right to you? In terms of scale?
Richard [on the phone]: No, not really, Robby. Sounds low to me. My estimate suggests 6% act out sexually with minors.
Matt: 6%, of what?
Richard: 6% of all priests.
Mike: How many priest do we have in Boston?
Matt: About 1,500, 1% is 15, 6% is…90?

…

Ben: 90 fucking priests? In Boston?
Robby: That’s what he said.
Ben: If there were 90 of these bastards, people would know.
Mike: Maybe they do.

…

Robby [on the phone]: I need you to tell me something, Jim. Could it be 90 priests?
Jim: What?
Robby: Could it be as high as 90?
Jim: Jesus, Robby!
Robby: I need to know, Jim. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.
Jim: You gotta stop this, Robby.
[Jim hangs up]

…

Robby: We have reasons to believe that there are allegations against as many as 87 priests in Boston.
Eric: I can’t talk to you about that.
Robby: Does that number sound right to you?
Eric: You gotta be kidding me, I just told you I don’t have time for this crap.
Robby: Eric, how many priests did you sign?
Eric: Robby, you know I can’t tell you that.
Robby: You’re going to give me their names and the names of their victims.
Eric: Are you threatening me?
Robby: We got two stories here: a story about degenerate clergy, and a story about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which story do you want us to write? Because we’re writing one of them.
Eric: I already sent you a list of names.
Robby: What are you talking about? To whom?
Eric: The Globe, years ago. After the Porter case I got plenty of calls. I had 20 priests in Boston alone But I couldn’t go after them without the press. So I sent you guys a list of names and you buried it.

…

Marty: We need to focus on the institution, not the individual priests. Practice and policy; show me the church manipulated the system so that these guys wouldn’t have to face charges, show me they put those same priests back into parishes time and time again. Show me this was systemic, that it came from the top, down.
Ben: Sounds like we’re going after Law.
Marty: We’re going after the system.

…

Mike: And so I could just walk in to that courthouse right now and get those documents?
Mitchell: No, you can not. Because the documents are not there.
Mike: But you just said they’re public.
Mitchell: I know I did. But this is Boston. And the Church does not want them to be found, so, they are not there.
Mike: Mitch, are you telling me that the Catholic Church removed legal documents from that courthouse?
Mitchell: Look, I’m not crazy, I’m not paranoid. I’m experienced. Check the docket. You’ll see. They control everything. Everything.[/b]

Up next: 9/11.

[b]Matt: This is nuts. Two days ago I told my wife we gotta be working on biggest story on the planet.

…

Phil: Look, I get it. No one wants to read about kids getting raped by priests. Especially now, but you asked a lot of people to relive some very painful experiences…
Sacha: Phil you know why we were taking off of this story…
Phil: It’s been six weeks since 9/11.
Sacha: I realize that, and we’re gonna get back to it.
Phil: When?! You’re doing the same thing you guys did the last time.
Sacha: No.
Phil: You’re dropping us.

…

Judge: These exhibits you’re after Mr. Rezendes…They’re very sensitive records.
Mike: With all due respect Your Honor, that’s not the question. The records are public.
Judge; Maybe so, but tell me…where is the editorial responsibility in publishing records
of this nature?
Mike: Well, where is the editorial responsibility in not publishing them?

…

Mike: We got Law. This is it.
Robby: No, this is Law covering for one priest, there’s another ninety out there.
Mike: Yeah, and we’ll print that story when we get it, but we got to go with this now.
Robby: No, I’m not going to rush this story, Mike.
Mike: We don’t have a choice, Robby. If we don’t rush to print, somebody else is going to find these letters and butcher this story. Joe Quimby from the Herald was at the freaking courthouse!
Robby: Mike…
Mike: What? Why are we hesitating? Baron told us to get Law. This is Law.
Robby: Baron told us to get the system. We need the full scope. That’s the only thing that will put an end to this.
Mike: Then let’s take it up to Ben and let him decide.
Robby: We’ll take it to Ben when I say it’s time.
Mike: It’s time, Robby! It’s time! They knew and they let it happen! To kids! Okay? It could have been you, it could have been me, it could have been any of us. We gotta nail these scumbags! We gotta show people that nobody can get away with this; Not a priest, or a cardinal or a freaking pope!

…

Robby: I’m out of time, Jim. We got cover-up stories on 70 priests. But the boss is not gonna run it unless I got confirmation from your side.
Jim: Are you out of your mind?
Robby: C’mon. This is our town, Jimmy. Everybody knew something was going on. And no one did a thing. We got to put an end to it.
Jim: Don’t tell me Don’t tell me what I got to do. Yeah, I helped defend these scumbags, but that’s my job, Robby. I was doing my job!
Robby: Yeah, you and everyone else.

…

Marty: Robby, that source of yours, is it something we could revisit?
Robby: It might be tough.
Ben: But he has no problem helping… the Church protect dozens of dirty priests. Guy is a scumbag.
Matt: He’s a lawyer, he’s doing his job.
Mike: He’s a shill for the Church.
Ben: He knew and he did nothing.
Mike: He could have said something years ago. Maybe save some lives.
Robby: What about us?
Ben: What’s that supposed to mean?
Robby: We had all the pieces. Why didn’t we get it sooner?
Ben: We didn’t have all the pieces.
Robby: We had Saviano, we had Barrett, we had Geoghan. We had the directories in the basement.
Ben: You know what, we got it now.
Mike: Robby, this story needed Spotlight.
Robby: Mike, Spotlight’s been around since 1970.
Ben: So what? We couldn’t see the scope of this. No one could. Robby, this started with one goddamn priest.
Robby: Macleish sent us a letter of 20 priests years ago. Sacha found a clip.
Mike: Are you freaking kidding, 20 priests? When?
Sacha: Just after Porter, December '93.
Robby: We buried the story in Metro. No folo.
Ben: That was you. You were Metro.
Robby: Yeah. That was me.

…

Marty [to the Spotlight reporters]: Can I say something here? Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark. Suddenly, a light gets turned on and there’s a fair share of blame to go around. I can’t speak to what happened before I arrived, but all of you have done some very good reporting here. Reporting that I believe is going to have an immediate and considerable impact on our readers. For me, this kind of story is why we do this.

…

Title card: Over the course of 2002, the Spotlight team published close to 600 stories on the scandal. 249 priests and brothers were publicly accused of sexual abuse within the Boston Archdiocese. The number of survivors in Boston is estimated to be well over 1,000. In December 2002, Cardinal Law resigned from the Boston Archdiocese. He was reassigned to the Basilica di Sata Maria in Rome, one of the highest ranking Roman Catholic cvhurches in the world. Major abuse scandals have been uncovered in the following places…[/b]

Over 200 cities around the globe are noted.

The good news: It’s New York City: Practically anything goes.

The bad news: It’s the 1950’s: Not everything does.

Even in New York City back then there was a stigma attached to homosexuality. There were even laws against it. Engaging in it bore consequences many today cannot even imagine.

On the other hand, after the Fifties, comes the Sixties. So: We are on the cusp of a cultural revolution of historic proportions. One in which many, many, many “social norms” were on the chopping block. Sexuality being right up there near the top.

And [of course] some are going to be more or less sophisticated about such things. That’s the part where class comes in. One is a sales clerk, the other wears mink stoles. But both are exceptional. And both are involved with men. Carol is divorcing one and Therese has one who wants her to be his wife.

And then there’s the part about love. Love between two people that, sex aside, becomes an extraordinary experience. And, if you are both drop dead gorgeous, all the better.

Aside from the child custody conflict though, there is no broad political subtext here. This is years before Stonewall. It all seems to focus more instead on two particular individuals who, in a city of millions, happen to bump into each other “out in the world” and become attracted to each other in a big, big way.

Most of us would very much like it to happen in our own lives.

And I know that it never happened to me.

IMDb

[b]Both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara said that they had great chemistry on set and filming their love scene was relatively easy. Blanchett credited director Todd Haynes for making her and Mara feel comfortable. “There was a lot of trust on the set between Rooney and Todd and Todd and I and he was very clear about how he wanted to shoot it and what parts he was going to use so we all felt very safe.”

The character of Carol Aird was inspired by Virginia Kent Catherwood (1915-1966), a Philadelphia socialite six years older than Patricia Highsmith with whom the author had a love affair in the 1940s. Catherwood lost custody of her daughter after her homosexuality was used against her with a taped recording of a lesbian liaison she had in a hotel room.

The novel “The Price of Salt” was inspired by a blonde woman in a mink coat that ordered a doll from Patricia Highsmith when she was working as a temporary salesgirl in the toy section of Bloomingdale’s in New York City during the 1948 Christmas season. Highsmith recalled feeling “odd and swimmy in the head, near to fainting, yet at the same time uplifted, as if I had seen a vision.”

The film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) international premiere.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_(film
trailer youtu.be/679wr31SXWk

CAROL [2015]
Directed by Todd Haynes

[b]Carol: And do you live alone, Therese Belivet?
Therese: Well, there’s Richard. He’d like to live with me. Oh no, it’s nothing like that, I mean he’d like to marry me.
Carol: I see…and would you like to marry him?
Therese: Well, I barely even know what to order for lunch.

…

Carol: What a strange girl you are.
Therese: Why?
Carol: Flung out of space…

…

Therese: I always feel funny taking pictures of people, like it’s some sort of in…
Dannie: Invasion of privacy?
Therese: Yeah.
Dannie: Well, all of us, you know, we have affinities for people. We like certain people. You like certain people, right?
Therese: Sometimes.
Dannie: And you don’t like others. And you don’t know why you are attracted to some people and not others. The only thing you really know is you either are attracted or you’re not. It’s like physics bouncing off each other like pinballs.
Therese: Yeah, but not everything’s as simple as a bunch of pinballs reacting off of each other.

…

Harge: Abby. There’s always Abby.
Carol: Abby and I were over long before you and I were over, Harge.
Harge: It shouldn’t be like this.
Carol: I know.

…

Harge: How do you know my wife?
Carol: Harge, please.
Therese: I work at Frankenberg’s, sir, the department store.
Carol: I ordered a gift from her desk. I forget my gloves, she returned them, and I thanked her.
Harge: Well, that’s bold.

…

Harge: I put nothing past women like you, Carol.
Carol: You married a woman like me.
Harge [angrily]: If you don’t get in that car with us right now…
Carol: Then what? It’s over?
Harge: Goddamn you. You were never cruel…

…

Therese: I should call a cab…
Carol: Just when you think it can’t get any worse, you run out of cigarettes.

…

Carol [on the phone]: I was horrible. Earlier. Will you forgive me?
Therese: Yes, I mean…I mean…
Carol: Then will you…would you let me come see you tomorrow evening?
Therese: All right. Yes. I want to know…I think…I mean, I want to ask you things, but I’m not sure that you want that.
Carol [weeping]: Ask me things. Please…

…

Fred [an attorney]: Harge has sought an injunction which denies you any access to Rindy until the hearing. And I’m afraid Harge has changed his mind about joint custody. He wants sole custody of Rindy.
Carol: We’ve already reached an agreement on custody. What’s this all about?
Fred: They’re filing papers on the 29th in District Family Court for the, uh, permanent custody petition.
Carol: Can he do this? Is it right?
Fred: I don’t know if it’s right, but it’s legal.
Carol: On what grounds?
Fred: Listen, let’s wait till after Christmas…
Carol: Fred, on what grounds?
Fred: They’re petitioning the judge to consider a morality clause.
Carol: A morality…what the hell does that mean?
Fred: Okay, I won’t mince words with you. Abby Gerhard.

…

Therese: Have you ever been in love with a boy?
Richard: No.
Therese: But you’ve heard of it.
Richard: Of course. I mean, have I heard of people like that? Sure.
Therese: I don’t mean people like that. I mean two people who just…fall in love. With each other. Say, a boy and a boy. Out of the blue.
Richard: I don’t know anyone like that. But I’ll tell you this: there’s always some reason for it. In the background.
Therese: So you don’t think it could just…happen to somebody, just…anybody?
Richard: No. I don’t. What are you saying? Are you in love with a girl?
Therese: No.

…

Abby: You know, Harge, you’ve spent ten years making damn sure her only point of reference is you…your job, your friends, your fam…
Harge: Where is she? Goddamn it! She’s still my wife, Abby. She’s my responsibility.
Abby: You know, that’s some way of showing it, slapping her with an injunction.
Harge [desparately]: I love her.
Abby [quietly, almost pitifully]: I can’t help you with that.

…

Carol: Happy New Year.
Therese: Happy New Year.
Carol: Harge and I never spend New Year’s Eve together. There’s always a business function, always clients to entertain.
Therese: I’ve always spent it alone. In crowds. I’m not alone this year.

…

Therese [to Carol]: Take me to bed…

…

Carol [at the car]: Where is my suitcase?
Therese: I put it in the back.
Carol: I want my fucking suitcase!
[she takes a gun out of it]
Therese: Carol, what’s going on?!

…

Carol [to the private detective paid to spy on her]: Where’s the tape, you son of a bitch?

…

Therese: How could you?
Private detective: I’m a professional, Miss Belivet. It’s nothing personal.

…

Therese [to Carol]: I don’t know what I want. How could I know what I want if I say yes to everything?

…

Therese: She’s gone?
Abby: Early this morning.
Therese: Is she coming back?
Abby: No.

…

Therese: With you and Carol, what happened?
Abby: It’s completely different. I’ve known Carol since I was ten years old. It was five or so years ago. Summer. Late one night, my Ford broke down near my mother’s house. We tried to stay up but curled up together in my old twin bed. And that was it. For a while. And then it changed. It changes. Nobody’s fault.

…

Carol [voice-over in a letter to Therese]: Dearest, there are no accidents, and he would’ve found us one way or another. Everything comes full circle. Be grateful it was sooner rather than later. You’ll think it harsh of me to say so, but no explanation I offer will satisfy you. Please don’t be angry when I tell you that you seek resolutions and explanations because you’re young. But you will understand this one day. I want you to imagine me there to greet you, our lives stretched out ahead of us, a perpetual sunrise. But until then, there must be no contact between us. I have much to do, and you, my darling, even more. Please believe that I would do anything to see you happy. And so, I do the only thing I can. I release you.

…

Carol [at the custody hearing]: Harge I want you to be happy. I didn’t give you that. I…I failed you. I mean, we both could have given more, but, we gave each other Rindy, and that is the most breathtaking, the most generous of gifts. So why are we spending so much time trying to keep her from each other? Now, what happened with Therese I wanted. And I will not deny it, or say that I…But I do regret, and I grieve for the mess we are about to make of our child’s life.

…

Carol: Anyway the apartment’s a nice big one. It’s big enough for two. I was hoping you might like to come live with me, but I guess you won’t. Would you?
Therese: No, I don’t think so.

…

Carol to Therese: I love you…[/b]

Straight out of Palm Springs?

Straight out of Beverley Hills?

Straight out of the Hamptons?

Nope, just doesn’t resonate. No cache. No grit.

But: straight out of Compton? Yep, that works.

On the other hand what does that actually mean? In other words, in being being straight out of Compton [and bursting at the seams with “attitude”] do you come closer to, say, the Black Panthers or to the Crips and the Bloods?

That’s where many of the reactions to this film fall. How does it either reflect or not reflect on the Black Community? Or on the interests of the Black Community? Going all the back to…when exactly?

Thug life. Being “gangstas”. Embodying the “strength of street knowledge”. The opening sequence says it all.

And the glorification of all manner of reactionary bullshit. No getting around that part, is there? Though it doesn’t really much surface here.

Look for the part that’s “just business”. And, in some respects, not really all that far removed from the way in which it is “just business” for the Sopranos. But, in other respects, it’s all “just business” in the more traditional sense. Once someone figures out a way to make money out of something in this culture the lawyers are employed to tug the whole enterprise in some very particular directions. Like, for example, all the way to the banks. Or the laundry rooms.

And then the part about the LAPD. Nothing exaggerated there.

As for all of the other battles, let’s just say that, by and large, they were internecine. And it was invariably about the money, about the power, about the egos. Though sometimes in the disguise of principles.

IMDb

[b]Despite the success of the movie, the film has not been screened in Compton. Because the city doesn’t have a cinema.

The actors re-recorded NWA’s entire Straight Outta Compton album to help them get into character.

The original cut of the film was 3 hours and 30 minutes. The cut scenes included Dr. Dre’s infamous beating of journalist Dee Barnes, the incident where Dre was shot four times in the leg, and a graphic flashback of his younger brother’s death.

Jerry Heller later said that one of his greatest regrets was dissuading Eazy-E from killing Marion ‘Suge’ Knight.

The letter that the FBI sent to NWA can be seen at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Jheri Curl wigs used in the film were $15,000 each.

On July 16, 2014, a casting call for extras for Straight Outta Compton was released on the Sande Alessi Casting Facebook page. The casting call was looking for African-American girls for the film using an A-D ranking scale. Though the ‘A girls’ category was looking for drop dead gorgeous ‘classy’ women of all colors, the ‘B through D’ categories were very explicitly linked with skin-tone. As the women get less attractive, the casting call wants the women’s flesh tone to be darker, with the lowest listing calling for ‘African American girls. Poor, not in good shape. Medium to dark skin tone.’ The casting call post went viral as people expressed their outrage of what they call colorism, sexism, and racism in the categorizing of black women. A representative for Sande Alessi Casting said the ad was an ‘innocent mistake’ and when it comes to casting ‘poor’ people, they’re also looking for women of various skin tones and body types. As for the A,B,C,D grouping system, Sande Alessi Casting says “it’s the usual method [they] use to look for different types of people for any project and it wasn’t meant to offend anyone.”

Jerry Heller described how he viewed Eazy-E’s ‘thug’ persona as “self-forged armor” in his book, “Ruthless: A Memoir”. Heller’s description of Compton, where Eazy-E and the other NWA group members lived, was that, “No one survived on the streets without a protective mask. No one survived naked. You had to have a role. You had to be ‘thug’, ‘playa’, ‘athlete’, ‘gangsta’, or ‘dope man’. Otherwise, there was only one role left to you. ‘Victim.’”

In real life, Ice Cube purposely chose not to see Eazy-E in the hospital nor go to his funeral. The last time he saw him alive was at a nightclub in New York where they buried the hatchet and forgave each other. He wanted his last moment with E to be a positive one.

Jerry Heller has stated that the falling out between himself and NWA depicted in the film is almost completely fictional but refuses to go into what actually happened between himself and Eazy-E towards the end of their working relationship, stating “Eric isn’t here to tell his side, so why should I?”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_ … pton_(film
trailer: youtu.be/fKaisid1jz8

STRAIGHT OUT OF COMPTON [2015]
Directed by F. Gary Gray

[b]Verna [mother]: Spinning records ain’t paying the bills around here.
Dr. Dre: What are you talking about? I get paid.
Verna: 50 dollars? So that makes you rich?
Dr. Dre: It’s a start.

…

Dr. Dre: Why you riding me so hard?
Verna: I’m not riding you, baby. I’m trying to make you understand. And you know how Irun my house. Now, you gonna have to go to school, or you gonna have to go to work. I don’t even care if you are a janitor. I don’t care what you do.
Dr. Dre: Long as I own the company. I know, I know.
Verna: But you don’t own the company. Lonzo does.
Dr. Dre [turning to walk away]: Okay
Verna: You think we’re done here?
Dr. Dre: Yeah, I mean, you keep…
Verna:P You got something to say to me?
Dr. Dre: You don’t care what I’m fighting for, okay? I already know what I want to do with my life, and it definitely ain’t sitting in some cubicle, taking orders on a bullshit-ass job.
[Verna slaps him across the face…hard]
Verna: Shut up! People used to tell me I was too young when I had you. Said I wouldn’t be shit. Said you wouldn’t be shit. Now, I worked my ass off to get us here, and I refuse to let you throw it all away.[/b]

Of course we know where this story goes.

[b]Ice Cube [to Dr. Dre]: Man! Had some crazy shit happen on the school bus today. I had a Crenshaw Mafia O.G. get on the bus, pulled a gun out on us, gave a fucking motivational speech and then bumped out. Shit was crazy!

…

Dr. Dre: I’m just saying, if you can slang dope…
Easy-E: Nigga!
Dr. Dre: What, man?
Easy-E: Just tell the whole fuckin’ world I sell dope.
Dr. Dre: Yo, yo. You can slang dope, you can slang records, man. It’s easy. You got a mind for that shit, E.
Easy-E: So what you talkin’ about doing? Li’I homey from last night?
Dr. Dre: Nah, man. He in a group. You know, they a trip, but…but that shit, the reality raps, that’s what I’m talking about, man. That’s it.

…

Dr. Dre: That’s what I’m saying, man. Start a label or something, man.
Easy-E: A label? That’s kinda fuckin’ farfetched, Dre.
Dr. Dre: Yeah, but check this out. What would you call a record label like that?
Easy-E [thinks about it]: Ruthless.

…

Lonzo [to Dr. Dre]: Wrap this shit up. I need you to get back on that slow jam we talked about. This whole reality rap shit y’all tryin’ to do, talkin’ about low riders and jail, don’t nobody wanna hear that shit.[/b]

Unless of course they do.

[b]Jerry: As a music manager, let me tell you what I can do for you, Eric. I will make you legit.
Easy-E: It seems as if I could do something for you.
Jerry: I see. You think because I don’t have some flashy office, I don’t know what I’m talking about? I worked with Elton John. I worked with Otis Redding. Let me see. I worked with War. I worked with Styx. I worked with…
Easy-E: Have you worked with anybody this decade?

…

Jerry: What’s NWA stand for, anyway? “No Whites Allowed”, something like that?
Eazy-E: No… Niggaz Wit’ Attitudes.
Jerry [after a pause]: I like that. I like that a lot.

…

Easy-E [to the group]: Let’s go get this money.

…

Cop: We’re trying to check these bangers, make sure they’re clean.
Jerry: I’m sorry. These are not bangers. Okay? These are artists.
Cop: Excuse me? Artists? Seriously? What kind of artists?
Jerry: Rappers. And they’re working with me in the studio right now.
Cop: Well, see, rap is not an art. I’m sorry. Who are you?
Jerry: I’m the manager.
Cop: Well, you’re wasting your time, Mr. Manager. These clients of yours, these rappers, they look like gang members.
Jerry: You can’t come down here and arrest people just because of what they look like. What, are you crazy? That’s police harassment.
Cop: You said you’re a manager, right? Not a fuckin’ lawyer.
Jerry: Does that matter? You cannot come down here and harass these guys because they’re black!

…

Greg Mack [on the radio]: 1580 KDA Y. This is Greg Mack of the Mack Attack. I gotta tell you, you are witnessing history. LA’s first supergroup, N. W.A, with their new album Straight Outta Compton, and they’re taking the nation by storm.

…

News reporter [on TV]: Gangster rap has become incredibly popular and profitable by selling lyrics about violence to a young mainstream audience that wouldn’t dream of going anywhere near a ghetto.
Tom Brokaw [on TV]: Not all music stars, as you know, are model citizens. Some have had run-ins with the law. That’s certainly nothing new. But now a few musicians have taken that to new heights. Or to new depths.

…

Dr. Dre [after Jerry hands him a letter]: What’s that? Motherfuckin’ FBI. What the fuck?
I’m supposed to not care about this?
Easy-E: Wait, the FBI? They comin’ after us too?
Jerry: Kind of.
Easy-E: I mean, what the letter say, Jerry?
Jerry: Uh, basically, uh… “A song recorded by the rap group N.W.A… on their album Straight Out Of Compton encourages violence against law enforcement. Advocating violence and assault is wrong, and we in the law enforcement community take exception to such action.”

…

Jerry: This isn’t, uh, street bullshit. This isn’t the Crips and Bloods and crap. This is the federal government. These guys can come after us a million different ways. I don’t even want to think about it. Why provoke them?
Easy-E:The fuck does that mean?
Ice Cube: If it was the LAPD, maybe I’d be a little worried. But we can’t let them censor us, Jerry.
Jerry: I’m not advocating for censorship, Cube.
Easy-E: Maybe none of us should be worried. Maybe we should be happy. 'Cause this letter right here is a gift.
Ice Cube: It’s the FBI, E. What you talking about?
Easy-E:This… is free publicity for N.W.A. We take this to the press and we show them what type of intimidation, discrimination and harassment that we dealing with from our government.

…

Jerry: …another one called me and told me she’s pregnant by you too. You just gotta slow down. You can’t fuck every broad on the planet.
Easy-E: So now pussy a problem?
Jerry: It’s gonna be a problem if you got 4,000 kids. Right?

…

Ice Cube [watching a crowd destroy their records]: Ain’t that some shit? Speak a little truth and people lose their minds.
Eazy-E: See, the truth is, they can do whatever they want with them. They bought them motherfuckers.

…

Detroit cop [ to the group before an N.W.A. performance]: No person shall disturb the
peace by participating or abetting… in any rude, indecent, drunken, riotous or violent conduct or the use of any vulgar, obscene or abusive language in a public place. Note also the performance of the song ‘F the Police’ will not be permitted. Refusal to abide by all
the Detroit city ordinances will result in immediate arrest and forfeiture.
Dr. Dre: Are we finished here? We got a show to do.
Cop: Just watch yourself.

…

Ice Cube [to the audience]: Hey, hold on, hold on. Y’all know what the motherfuckin’ police tried to tell us backstage?
Audience: What?!
Ice Cube: They tried to tell us what the fuck we can’t play. Motherfuckers tryin’ to tell us what the fuck we can’t say. This N.W.A! We do what the fuck we wanna do. We say what the fuck we wanna say! So everybody… put them middle fingers high in the sky. And to the punk-ass cop backstage…Yo, Dre.
Dr. Dre: What up?
Ice Cube: I got somethin’ to say…

…

Ice Cube [after Jerry hands him the contract to sign]: All right, cool. So I could take this
to a lawyer or somebody, right?
Jerry: Cube, those guys are paid to make trouble. They’re gonna create problems where no problems exist.
Ice Cube: Jerry, you know I don’t know what none of this legal shit mean. All right? None of us do. We’re gonna need a lawyer before we sign anything.
Jerry: Everybody else has already signed. I thought you knew this. You’re the only one who hasn’t.

…

Jerry [handing Ice Cube a check]: There’s also this…$75,000. Sign the contract, and all this money is yours.
Ice Cube: That’s my money anyway, Jerry! I earned that money! Now I wrote a lot of hit songs. We’ve been on this tour for months, selling out shows, selling records. I know it’s plenty of money!
Jerry: Really? Jesus Christ.
Ice Cube: Gimme my money, Jerry.
Jerry: How the hell do you think this works? How the hell do you think all of this gets paid for? The hotel rooms, the tour buses, security, the parties, all this shit. How do you think it gets paid for, you think it’s free?
Ice Cube: Why are you doing this now? If we were so good, why didn’t you give us contracts in the beginning?
Jerry: Because nothing is a sure thing, Cube. Even a great talent can crash and burn. Too much ego, too much excess, too many expectations. It tends to ruin things. You oughta keep that in mind.
[Jerry and Cube tensely glare at each other]
Ice Cube: This Eric’s company, right? Bye Jerry
[he tosses contract on the table]
Ice Cube: I’m out.

…

Ice Cube [to Dr. Dre]: I’d rather be broke than get fucked. I told you not to sign that shit, Dre.
Dr. Dre: Nigga, I got bills to pay. And you know that. And I gotta put some money in my
mama’s hand after Tyree passed, man.
Ice Cube: I feel you. We gotta do what we gotta do. They’re gonna take care of you.
You their bread and butter.
Dr. Dre: Cube, we Ruthless.
Ice Cube: We N.W.A. They Ruthless.

…

Ice Cube: I been did the work. I gave you the product. Give me my money, Bryan. When a man does the job, he’s supposed to get paid, and you making it seem like I’m beggin’ for some shit that’s technically mine.
Bryan: Of course you are not begging. And I am not trying to be difficult, man. I promise you.
Ice Cube: But you can’t help me, right? That’s what you telling me?
Bryan: My hands are tied, man.[/b]

Let’s just say that that was the wrong answer.

[b]Dr. Dre: Hey, um…Maybe…Maybe some of your people can look into my paperwork too.
Suge: Most definitely.

…

Jerry [after hearing Ice Cube’s “fuck N.W.A” rap]: First thing we’re gonna do, we’re gonna sue this ignorant fuck. That’s what we’re gonna do. Defamation of character, libel, I don’t really care of that anti-Semitic piece of fucking shit, who the fuck does he think he is? Unfucking believable! That kind of fucking bullshit! Jew bashing bullshit! You know what, I’ll call up my friends at the J.D.L. They’ll handle him, we’ll see how much he likes that.
Eazy-E: Jerry, you gotta relax. Alright? Niggas don’t even know what anti-Semitic means anyway, it’s a fucking battle rap.
Jerry: C’mon, Eric, we gotta get organised. We gotta fight this kind of ignorant fucking bullshit. You know what? I always knew he was a hateful human being. This is your ignorant shit. He calls it political? This is ignorant shit! I always knew it. Now the whole world is gonna know. I’m gonna make sure of that, okay? I don’t understand why the fuck you’re not more angry about this? Did you hear what he said?
Eazy-E: I heard what he said.
Jerry: DID YOU HEAR WHAT HE SAID?!!!
Eazy-E: I heard what he said!
Jerry: About you? About me? Come on!
Eazy-E: You got your way of dealing with it, I got mine.

…

Dr. Dre: Man, we started this N.W.A shit. I just want it to be right.
Easy-E: And this what you think right? Turnin’ your back on somebody after all he done for us.
Dr. Dre: You mean all he done for you. Right? Look at me. Look at me. When Tyree died, you said we was always gonna be brothers. But I guess you forgot about that. I’m-a start my own company with Suge Knight, E. Thought we were brothers, man.

…

Easy-E [after Suge and his thugs beat the shit out of him]: I gotta kill this motherfucker
Suge Knight. I just came here to let you know, 'cause shit might get a little thick. I need to stay protected.
Jerry: No, you’re not gonna do that. No.
Easy-E: I didn’t come here to ask for permission. I came here to let you know. You wanted to be involved with this gangster shit? Here we go.
Jerry: You do that, and you’re gonna ruin everything we’ve worked for.
Easy-E: You really think I got a fucking choice? Look at my face! This the streets. Motherfuckers came at me! Came at us! If I don’t hit back, we finished. It’s over.
Jerry: I’m not saying that we’re not gonna hit back. But this is not Compton…if you haven’t looked around. Drop that shit, okay? We don’t hit back with bullets. We hit back with lawyers. We drain these assholes. That really takes 'em down.
Easy-E: It ain’t about the money, Jerry. I don’t care about no money.
Jerry: Of course it is. And you should fucking care about the money. You’re so much smarter than these fucking thugs. You wanna kill somebody? You’re gonna go to jail forever. No more family, no more Ruthless, no more anything.
If you kill this man, his problems will be over, and yours will just be beginning. Don’t be a fucking fool.

…

Ice Cube [Cube is upset at the reporter asking questions about “Fuck Tha Police”, Cube’s relationship with the Nation of Islam & his feelings about Jerry Heller, instead of asking about Rodney King]: But I get it. The bigger the story, the bigger the check in your field of work. I shouldn’t blame you, it’s not your fault. What’s your name?
[extends his hand]
CNN Journalist [extends his hand]: Brian.
Ice Cube [retracts his hand]: Eat a dick, Brian. Get the fuck out my house. Y’all done here.

…

Dr Dre: This why we got money? To act like we ain’t got no goddamn sense? We coulda did all this dumb shit back in Compton. But this what the fuck y’all turn into. You sittin’ up here eatin’ fuckin’ crab. Who the fuck are you? Huh? This my motherfucking name
on the wall, man! And y’all in here acting like y’all on motherfucking vacation. I got Pac in the next motherfucking room. Grindin’, man. Workin’! And y’all niggas in here partyin’?!
Suge: You trippin’. We can do anything we wanna do. We started this thing. This is us.
Dr Dre: Nah, nigga. Death Row, that’s us. I don’t know what the fuck this shit is.

…

Eazy-E: I liked 'Boyz ‘n the Hood.’
Ice Cube: You called it an Afterschool Special.
Eazy-E: I like Afterschool Specials, Cube.

…

Eazy-E [upset that Jerry had embezzled money from him]: Here’s what’s about to happen. I’m gonna get N.W.A back together. And you ain’t gonna have nothing to do with it this time.
Jerry: Why the fuck can you even say something like that? What the fuck is going on with you, man? I know what’s good for you, I know what’s good for Ruthless, and we have worked up a trust after years of hard work and that trust is our foundation, Eric. I don’t give a shit.
Eazy-E: Trust? Trust is a muthafucka!
Jerry: Is it? May I ask you something? Eric, If what I’m doing is so illegal, how come I’ve never been sued? If I’m such a fucking thief, such a liar, such a motherfucker, how come nobody’s ever come to collect? Because this is business. And this is how it works. And it’s not always pretty, no. Do I cover my own ass? Do I cover my own end? Absolutely. But don’t you dare fucking tell me that I have not taken care of you. Don’t you fucking tell me that I’ve not had your back from day one! Day one!!
Eazy-E [indicating the folder]: Is this taking care of me?

…

Tomica: Aren’t you gonna say something? What is it? A respiratory infection, pneumonia, what?
Doctor: Yes, well, it is those things and more, I’m afraid. We ran a full blood battery and… I’m sorry, Mr. Wright, but you’ve tested positive for HIV.
Eazy-E: Get the fuck outta here.
Tomica: What?
Doctor: The normal T-cell count is anywhere between 500 and 1500. Right now, your T-cell count is 14.
Eazy-E: But I ain’t no faggot.
Doctor: No, Mr. Wright, actually the virus can be transmitted in quite a few ways, including unprotected heterosexual sex.
Eazy-E: That’s wrong. You… you gotta test that again. Test that again.
Doctor: We’ve run the test five times, with five different samples, and the results remain.
Tomica: Shit!
[Tomica storms out of the room]
Eazy-E: She’s pregnant, Doc! What does this mean?
Doctor: It doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s contracted the virus, but… we’ll have to test her, to be sure.
Eazy-E: So what do we do? When do we start the the treatment? I mean, what… I gotta get healthy, I got things to do. I got… What’s we supposed to do?
Doctor: Mr. Wright, you need to understand that you are very, very sick.
Eazy-E: But I don’t even feel that bad Doc, don’t tell me that.
Doctor: With care, and palliative care, we can probably keep you comfortable for maybe six months, at the very most.
[by this time, Eazy is in a deep panic and is beginning to cry]
Eazy-E: Comfortable? What do you mean comfortable?
Doctor: It’s just a matter of time. I am, I am truly, truly sorry, Mr. Wright. I’ll leave you time to process this.
[the doctor leaves the room, leaving Eazy helpless as he cries] [/b]

For some it’s hard to imagine not coming up with 630 dollars. Let alone not coming up with it to pay for an abortion.

The abortion here is not for Elle. Elle is, well, old. And a lesbian. Instead, the abortion is for Elle’s 18 year old granddaughter, Sage.

So the first thing you’re wondering is how the “politics of abortion” will play out. Will Sage have the abortion? Will there be characters going back and forth debating the morality of it?

And what could possibly constitute a “happy ending” here? But that’s basically what we get. Relationships get mended. All of them practically.

Anyway, in order to get the 630 bucks they have to hit the road. And that’s what this is: a road movie. After all, it’s “on the road” that all the other interesting characters can be introduced. Though not many of them are what you would call “likeable”. And Elle is downright misanthropic. On the surface as it were. Oh, and it’s “on the road” that all the skeletons are rattled and all the secrets are dug up.

Only this particular road trip is measured in hours, not days.

Look for the generation gaps. And they’re huge.

IMDb

[b]The car that Elle (Lily Tomlin) and Sage (Julia Garner) drive in for much of the movie is a 1955 Dodge Royal that is actually owned by Lily Tomlin. Tomlin told USA Today that she bought it in 1975 for $1,500. She said, “It’s not a prize car. It’s not a car that people yearn for. But it has a nice look to it. . . . The car is almost a character in the movie. I knew I kept that car for a reason.”

The film’s budget was $600,000.

Paul Weitz wrote the role specifically for Lily Tomlin. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_(film
trailer: youtu.be/XspFo3jiVR87

GRANDMA [2015]
Written and directed by Paul Weitz

[b]Title card: “Time passes. That’s for sure.” Eileen Myles

…

Olivia: You know I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. You’re never there for me. You’re a terrible girlfriend. But…you’re a wonderful poet.
Elle: I’m not a wonderful poet, I’m an academic. An unemployed one.
Olivia: You should send your new poems to your editor.
Elle: She’s got dementia. She might actually like them.

…

Olivia: I thought love conquered everything?
Elle: No. Love does not conquer everything. Four months, Olivia. Four fucking months we’ve been together. Try 38 years. Try being with someone for 38 years. You’re a footnote.
Olivia: A “footnote”? That’s a really horrible thing to say.
Elle: Yes, well, I’m a horrible person.

…

Sage: I need $600, 630.
Elle: For what?
Sage: Um… I’m pregnant.
Elle: Okay.
Sage: I don’t want to have a baby. I want to get an abortion. And I’m broke. I only have $18. Is that terrible?
Elle: Well, it’s nothing to dance a jig about.

…

Sage: What am I gonna do?
Elle: Well, you already said what you’re gonna do, right? I mean, you’ve put some thought into it. Haven’t you? Because this is something that you will probably think about at some moment, every day for the rest of your life.

…

Elle: Where can you get a reasonably priced abortion these days?

…

Coffee shop owner: I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave now. You’re disturbing the customers.
Elle: I’m a customer. Do you know what a customer is?
Coffee shop owner: I know what a customer is.
Elle: A customer is someone who pays for your services. So I am a customer. I mean, what other customers
are we disturbing?
[she looks over towards a man and a woman]
Elle: Oh, them? Ozzie and Harriet?
Coffee shop owner: Yes. You’re disturbing them.
Elle: No, we’re disturbing you. Isn’t that right?
Coffee shop owner: Yes, you are also disturbing me.
Elle: Because, what, I’m talking about abortions? Do you know this coffee shop used to be an abortion clinic? Where you’re standing right now there were thousands of unintended pregnancies terminated.

…

Elle: Why didn’t you use a condom? Or, for humanity’s sake, get a vasectomy?
Cam: What? What did she just say?
Sage: She didn’t say anything, okay?
Cam: Look, she said it wasn’t her time.
Elle: Her time? What are you, a moron? What, are you both morons? Don’t they teach kids sex ed anymore?!

…

Sage: Mom’s right, you’re crazy!
Elle: Because I rapped that little shit across the knuckles? What’s he gonna say? “Sage’s grandma beat me up”?[/b]

Actually, she hit him in the balls with a hockey stick.

[b]Elle [to Sage]: You need to be able to say ‘screw you’ sometimes.

…

Sage: What is this?
Elle: What is The Feminine Mystique? You’re asking me what is The Feminine Mystique?
Sage: Mystique’s a character in X-Men.
Elle: What? The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. You know in The Wizard of Oz, when the curtain gets pulled back and everyone sees that the Wizard is a fake? Because Toto the dog pulled back the curtain. Well, Betty was like Toto.

…

Elle [holding a book]: Look at this, Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life. Her autobiography. Dare I ask if you know who Simone de Beauvoir is?
Sage: No. I have no idea. Guess I’m an idiot.
Elle: Guess you are.

…

Sage: Why’d Olivia call you “writer-in-residence”?
Elle: She’s calling me a sellout because that’s how I used to make a living. You go someplace, a private college, usually because that’s where they have the money. You do a few readings, teach a few seminars then you leave, because you don’t have tenure.
Sage: But how is that selling out?
Elle: Oh, because I wasn’t suffering for my art.

…

Karl: Are you’re sure you’re not here to say you’re sorry? To apologize to me? Finally?
Elle: You’ve got 11 grandkids. And you can’t let go of old shit?
Karl: I find that as I grow older, old shit just bubbles up. It bubbles up out of the tar. Don’t you find that to be the case?

…

Karl: So, what’s it for? What’s the money really for?
Elle: I told you, it’s for rent.
Karl: Yeah, you told me that, but you’re a shitty liar. So, what’s it for?
Sage: Um, I…
Elle: She needs to terminate a pregnancy and she’s gonna have an abortion.
Karl [abruptly]: No. No fucking way.
Elle: Karl…
Karl: Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your goddamn mind?
Elle: Come on, Karl.
Karl: Go to hell.

…

Elle: You know what we have to do, right?
Sage: Yeah.

…

Judy [Sage’s mom, Elle’s daughter]: Please don’t tell me that you are fucking pregnant.
Sage: Oh, my God.
Elle: She’s pregnant.
Judy: Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I should fucking…You asshole! I should fucking kill you, you know that? What happened to the box of condoms that I bought you? Huh? Did you eat them? There were a hundred condoms in that box!

…

Judy: What about all those condoms? Hm?
Sage: We used them.
Judy: Oh, you and the rodent?
Sage: Yes.
Judy: Well, you know what? You can get more. I didn’t hand-make them. I didn’t knit them.

…

Sage: Am I gonna go to hell?
Elle: What?
Sage: Am I gonna go to hell? What if it’s true?
Elle: What are you talking about? Along with all the millions of other women who’ve had abortions?
Sage: Yeah. Along with them.
Elle: I don’t believe in a vengeful God. When you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s blackness. End of story. Void. Get used to it.

…

Elle [spotting an abortion clinic protester]: Uh-oh. Just keep walking.
Protester: Don’t kill your baby.
Elle: Just ignore her.
Protester: Your baby has fingernails.
Elle: Not until 22 weeks, genius.
Protester: Baby-killing slut! If you go in there, God will send you to hell!

…

Abortion clinic receptionist: What happened to you?
Elle: Listen, I got slugged by the bad seed out there. It’s nothing. I’m fine.

…

Elle: You gonna do a D and C?
Doctor: We don’t do curettage at this stage of pregnancy. Not at this clinic.
Elle: What do you do?
Doctor: We do vacuum aspiration. It’s less traumatic to the uterus.
Elle: Guess it’s not the Dark Ages anymore.
Doctor: No.

…

Francesca: How come you stopped writing?
Elle: People stopped reading.[/b]

Imagine how hard it must be to entertain folks as a comedian when so much of your “personal life” is in the toilet. Neil’s for example. He is [of course] estranged from his daughter. And his “comeback” performances all unfold in [of course] the Mojave Desert.

In fact in between his routines we are treated to all manner of Mojave Desert tours. Fascinating stuff. You’ll wonder: Do these things actually happen?

And the jokes?

Well, here’s one that’s typical:

Why don’t rapists eat at T.G.I. Friday’s? Well, it’s hard to rape with a stomachache.

So, will he reconcile with his daughter? Will he finally get that Hollywood career?

Will anyone give a fuck? Should anyone give a fuck?

What we explore here in turn is the meaning of the word “entertainment” in this day and age. In other words, like most things, it can mean practically anything. And how far removed is that from having no meaning at all.

Bottom line: Are you a misanthrope? You’ll love it. Are you at home in an truly surreal world? This one’s for you.

This is also one of those films that was generally applauded by the critics [80% fresh on 40 reviews at RT] but largely panned by the general public [5.7 rating at IMDb]

Oh, and this guy looks exactly like you would expect him to look. You know, whatever that means.

Enjoy the, uh, jokes…

IMDb

Gregg Turkington plays a version of his stage persona, Neil Hamburger.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_(2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/GUwV46HCow4

ENTERTAINMENT [2015]
Written in part and directed by Rick Alverson

[b]Neil [in front of prisoners]: What’s the difference…what’s the difference between Courtney Love and the American flag? It would be wrong to urinate on the American flag.

…

Neil: What do you get, what do you get when you cross Sir Elton John with a saber tooth tiger? I don’t know, but you better keep it away from your ass!

…

Neil [leaving a message on his daughter’s phone]: Hi, sweetheart. It’s Daddy. I’m in the desert, and it’s beautiful. It’s hot, but, but it’s beautiful. And, um, today I took a tour of an airplane graveyard they have out here, and they got every plane you can think of: 737, 747, jumbo jets. And you just walk right into the planes. And, um… I, uh, I will talk to you again soon. Good night.

…

Neil [at a bar]: Why did Madonna feed her infant baby Alpo brand dog food? Well, she had no choice, that’s just what came out of her breasts.

…

Neil: Why did Carrot Top, legendary Carrot Top, refuse, absolutely refuse the pleading requests of the topless Playboy playmate who was naked in the jacuzzi with him? Because she was begging him to shoot himself in the head.
[no one responds]
Neil: I’m just trying to earn a living here. Come on, people, these are…These are great jokes. We traveled a long distance carrying these jokes in order to bring them here and thrust them into your fool faces. So sit there and paste a smile on your face and have some fun.
[no response]
Neil: That’s what it’s all about, folks, having fun, forgetting your problems. And you have a lot of problems, I can tell. Forget 'em just for a few moments and just laugh with me.

…

John [to Neil]: All right, cuz. Hey. It’s been great havin’ ya here. It’s just good to have you back in my life. Sorry it’s been so long. You’re a good boy, you try your best, you do this weird show, but it doesn’t matter because you’re trying, you’re getting yourself out there and you’re trying to tell jokes that make people happy, that’s what’s important, just keep doing it.

…

Neil [leaving a message on his daughter’s phone]: Hi, sweetheart. Um, it was a long, long day. Do you believe in God?

…

Neil [on stage]: During his long, legendary broadcasting career, what was the number one question most often asked by Larry King? “Should I be concerned about blood in my diarrhea?” What was Elvis Presley’s worst ever release? The ejaculation containing Lisa Marie. What’s the worst thing, the worst thing about being gang raped by Crosby, Stills and Nash? No Young.[/b]

And [gasp!] no reaction from the “crowd”. Just incredulity. Then a young woman makes a remark.

Neil: Why don’t you shut your mouth, little lady? We’re trying to do a show here.
Woman: For real?
Neil: Yeah, for real, huh? Just shut up so I can do the jokes and we can all get out of here, huh? On the outside of the building it didn’t say that we were in hell, and then the few moments after when the stink from your syphilis breath, it started wafting over all the gentlemen and ladies who have come out for the show tonight, excluding yourself, of course. The minute that the waft of stench, huh, from the herpes and the syphilis and the lice that you eat, huh, the minute that started coming…
[the woman throws her beer – mug and all – at him]
Neil: You little whore. What makes you think you can come here and throw a drink at someone who’s traveled a great distance to bring laughs to this community, huh? What the hell’s wrong with you? Mental… Mental illness, huh? Mental… Oh, I guess you didn’t
throw the drink, though. She slipped and the drink fell. She slipped on all the semen gushing out of her ass when she stood up, huh?Surprised you didn’t break your chin on the fall, and then get the semen into the infected cut. But you have plenty of infected cuts already. The little whore’s having a tantrum. She’s having a tantrum. Oh no, she heard a joke she didn’t like. So now she’s gonna cry like a little baby and throw her poo-poo around. Get the hell out of here, garbage woman, huh! You little whore. You little whore.
[the woman stalks off]
Neil: That took the wind out of my sails, I’ll tell ya. Because that’s unacceptable behavior. When someone travels this great distance to bring these jokes for you people, to bring some joy into your lives, and I’m literally plucking jokes out of my heart and thrusting them into your fool faces. And to have somebody do something like that, really stinks up the evening, wouldn’t you agree?

The audience is simply…stunned.

Neil [after the “whore” attacks him in the parking lot]: Why don’t they take some of the money from the drinks and use it to buy some security guards so that we’re protected from weirdoes. You can’t have a fucking nightclub with no security. You can’t have people drinking their fucking brains out and then you’re stuck there in the firing line of these cocksuckers and meth freak-o drug assholes.
Eddie: Why don’t you get some rest?
Neil: Fuck that. Fuck you.

Next up: a sequence of events you’ve got to see to believe. Culminating in an ending that you are seeing and still don’t believe.

It’s the wild, wild west. And [as we all know] that’s the place where folks struggle to fit in somewhere between the rule of law and the law of the jungle. Not quite civilized and not quite not. And, when you’re a couple of bounty hunter hell bent on bringing all the particularly uncivilized scondrels to justice [for, among other things, the reward money] things can become particularly problematic.

Welcome to Minnie’s Haberdashery.

Or, rather, to Quentin Tarantino’s rendition of it. So we know it’s not going to be your ordinary haberdashery.

Then there’s this part:

The Hateful Eight (2015), according to Quentin Tarantino, was his metaphoric way of breaking down his feelings about The Thing (1982), i.e. the way he felt watching it for the first time in a movie theater. The Thing was the only film that Quentin Tarantino showed to the cast.

This is one of those films that invite us to speculate about how folks behaved back then and how they behave now. Some things change, some things don’t. Then we can bring the discussion around to one or another sociological trope or one or another political conflict. Then choose sides. And then wax philosophical about the difference between, say, civilized and uncivilized justice. The part about “the law” and such. And that brings us around to the Right Makes Might folks vs. the folks who champion democracy and the rule of law instead. That’s basically where we are historically here in America. Heading in the general direction of a more civilized democracy. Only some will never accomodate themselves to that. Not then, not now.

Or, sure, we can just refight the Civil War.

Race after all is everywhere here.

Look for lots and lots and lots of snow. Even inside the haberdashery it is snowing. It might mean something, it might mean nothing at all.

Note: There is language and dialogue here that some might find offensive.

IMDb

[b]According to the script, this film’s plot heavily references many important historic realities that occurred in the years following the Civil War, including tension and rivalry between Union and Confederate veterans, the attitude over abolishing slavery and granting blacks equal rights and the economic struggles of the southern states and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

With three words (“The Hateful Eight”) this is the longest title for a film directed by Quentin Tarantino. All the titles of his previous films only consisted of two words (i.e. Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), and Kill Bill: Vol. 1/2 (2003).

After the script leaked online, Quentin Tarantino did not want to make the film. But after they did a brief reading of the script in L.A. the cast were stunned and got excited for the film and with Samuel L. Jackson persuading him to do this film, Tarantino accepted.

In the roadshow version, the word “nigger” is used sixty-five times, which is a little over half the use in Quentin Tarantino’s previous film Django Unchained (2012), which is said to hold the record for the movie with the most uses of the “n word.” [/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt3460252/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hateful_Eight
trailer: youtu.be/6_UI1GzaWv0

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015)
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

[b]Marquis [a bounty hunter looking up as a stagecoach comes to a halt]: Got room for one more?

…

John [a bounty hunter]: So why don’t you explain to me what an African bounty hunter’s doin’ wanderin’ around in the snow in the middle of Wyoming.
Marquis: I’m tryin’ to get a coupla’ of bounty’s to Red Rock.
John: So you still in business?
Marquis: You know I am.

…

John: Major Marquis Warren, this here is Daisy Domergue. Domergue, to you, this is Maj. Warren.
Daisy: Howdy nigger!
John: She’s a pepper, ain’t she? Now girl, don’t you know darkee’s don’t like bein’ called niggers no more. They find it offensive.
Daisy: I been called worse.
John: Now that I can believe.

…

Marquis: So you takin’ her into Red Rock to hang?
John: You bet.
Marquis: Gonna’ wait to watch it?
John: You know I am. I wanna’ hear her neck snap with my own two ears. You never wait to watch ‘em hang?
Marquis: My bounties never hang, cause I never bring ‘em in alive.
John: Never?
Marquis: Never ever. We talked about this in Chattanooga. Bringing desperate men in alive, is a good way to get yourself dead.
John: Can’t catch me sleepin’ if I don’t close my eyes.
Marquis: I don’t wanna’ work that hard.
John: No one said the job was suppose to be easy.
Marquis: No one said it was suppose to be that hard, neither.

…

Marquis: When the handbill says Dead or Alive, the rest of us shoot ya’ in the back from up on top of a perch somewhere, bring ya’ in dead over a saddle. But when John Ruth the hangman catches ya’, you don’t die by a bullet in the back. When The Hangman catches you…you hang.
Daisy: You overrate 'em nigger. I’ll give you he got guts. But in the brains department, he’s like a man who took a high dive in a low well.
[John belts her hard in the face]
John: Now Daisy, I want us to work out a signal system of communication. When I elbow you real hard in the face that means, “Shut up”.

…

Chris [sheriff]: You’re takin’ in three dead bodies and her into Red Rock to get paid, ain’t ya?
John: Yeah.
Chris [grinning]: Well, the man in Red Rock’s supposed to pay you is me, the new sheriff! So if ya’ll wanna get paid, ya’ll need to get me to Red Rock!

…

Chris: You ain’t never heard of Wellenbeck prisoner of war camp, West Virginia?
John: No Reb, I ain’t never heard of it! You bust out?
Chris: Major Marquis did more than bust out. Major Marquis had a bright idea. So bright you got to wonder, why nobody never thought about it before. Tell John Ruth about your bright idea.
Marquis: Well the whole damn place was just made out of kindling. So I burnt it down.

…

Chris: …once they started pullin’ out all the burnt bodies at Wellenbeck, seems not all of them boys were Rebs. You burnt up some of your own boys, didn’t ya’ Major? How many burnt prisoners they end up findin’? Wasn’t the final Yankee death count somethin’ like thirty-seven?
Marquis: That’s the thing about war Mannix, people die.
Chris: So ya’ chalkin’ it up to “War Is Hell”, ha? Well admittedly that’s a hard argument to argue with. But if memory serves, your side didn’t look at it that way. I think they thought, thirty-seven white men for one nigger wasn’t so hot a trade. I belive they accused you of being a kill crazy nigger who only joined the war to kill white folks and the whole Blue and Grey of it all didn’t really much matter to ya’. And that’s why they drummed your black ass outta’ the Cavalry with a yellow stripe down your back.

…

Chris [to Marquis]: You sure killed yourself your share of redskins in your day, didn’t ya’ Black Major? Cavalry tends to look kindly on that.

…

Chris: We weren’t foreign barbarians pounding on the city walls. We were your brothers. We deserved dignity in defeat.
Marquis: Just how many nigger towns did y’all sack in your fight for dignity in defeat?
Chris: My faire share, Black Major. ‘Cuz when niggers are scared, that’s when white folks are safe.
Marquis [putting the gun to Chris’s head]: You gonna talk that hateful nigger talk, you ride up top wtih O.B.
Chris: No no no no no. You got me talkin’ politics I didn’t wanna’. Like I said y’all, I’m just happy to be alive.

…

John: What’s your name, buster?
Oswaldo [smiling]: Well, it most certainly isn’t Buster.

…

Oswaldo [a hangman]: Now, you’re wanted for murder. For the sake of my analogy, let’s just assume that you did it. John Ruth wants to take you back to Red Rock to stand trail for murder. And, if you’re found guilty, the people of Red Rock will hang you in the
town square. And as the hangman, I will perform the execution. And if all those things end up taking place, that’s what civilized society calls “justice”. However, if the relatives and the loved ones of the person you murdered were outside that door right now. And after busting down that door, they drug you out in the snow and hung you up by the neck, that, we would be frontier justice. Now the good part about frontier justice is it’s very thirst quenching. The bad part is it’s apt to be Wrong as Right. But ultimately what’s the real difference between the two? The real difference is me the Hangman. To me, it dosen’t matter what you did. When I hang you, I will get no satisfaction from your death. It’s my job. I hang you in red Rock, I move on to the next town, I hang someone else there. The man who pulls the lever, that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice. For justice delivered without dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice.

…

Oswaldo: Who’s the chap with the Lincoln letter?
Chris: The Lincoln what? The letter from Abraham Lincoln? President Abraham Lincoln?
Oswaldo: Weren’t you pen pals?
Chris: With the President?
Oswaldo: I’m sorry, I heard somebody in your party had a letter from Abraham Lincoln, I assumed it was you.
John: Not him! The black fella’ in the stable.
Oswaldo: The nigger in the stable has a letter from Abraham Lincoln?!
John: Yeah.
Chris: The nigger in the stable has a letter from Abraham Lincoln?!

…

Chris: May I sit down, sir?
Sandy [confederate general]: According to the Yankees, it’s a free country.

…

Oswaldo: Gentlemen, gentlemen, I know Americans aren’t apt to let a little thing like an unconditional surrender get in the way of a good war. But I strongly suggest we don’t restage The Battle of Baton Rouge, during a blizzard in Minnie’s Haberdashery.

…

John: Yeah, Warren, that’s the problem with old men. You can kick 'em down the stairs, and say it’s an accident, but you can’t just shoot 'em.

…

John: As long as the bar’s Philadelphia I agree.

…

Joe: A bastard’s work is never done huh, John Ruth?

…

Chris: Look, considerin’ all the thing I done for money, I ain’t one to judge. But don’t you feel just the least little bad ‘bout hangin’ a woman?
Oswaldo: Till they invent a trigger a woman can’t pull, if you’re a hang man, you’re going to hang woman.

…

Chris: John Ruth, I hate to be the one to break it to ya’ but nobody in Minnie’s Haberdashery, had ever corresponded with Abraham Lincoln, Least of all, that nigger there.
John: Was all that horseshit?
Marquis: Course it was.
John: Well I guess it’s true what they say about you people. You can’t trust a fuckin’ word that comes outta’ your mouth.
Marquis: What’s the matter, John Ruth? I hurt your feelings?
John: As a matter of fact, you did.
Martquis: I know, I’m the only black son of a bitch you ever met, so I’m gonna’ cut you some slack. But you got no idea, what it’s like being a black man facin’ down America. The only time black folks are safe, is when white folks is disarmed. And this letter, had the desired effect of disarming white folks.
John: Call it what you want, I call it a dirty fuckin’ trick.
Marquis: You wanna’ know why I’d lie about something like that, white man? Got me on that stagecoach, didn’t it?

…

Marquis: Now don’t judge your boy too harshly, General. You ain’t never been cold as your boy was that day. You’d be surprised what a man that cold, would do for a blanket. Wanna know what your boy did? I took my big, black, pecker outta’ my pants. And I made him crawl through the snow on all fours over to it. Then I grabbed a hand full of that black hair on the back his head. Then I stuck my big, black Johnson right down his goddamn throat. And it was fulla’ blood, so it was warm. You bet your sweet ass it was warm. And Chester Charles Smithers, sucked on that warm black dingus for long as he could.

…

Narrator: About fifteen minutes have passed since we last left our characters. Joe Gage volunteered to take Smithers’ dead body outside. Straws were drawn to see who’d help him. O.B. lost. Chris, John Ruth and Oswaldo had a vigorous debate about the legality of the self-defense murder that just transpired. Major Marquis Warren, who was supremely confident about the legality of what just transpired ignored them, sat by himself at the table and drank brandy. Captain Chris Mannix donned the dead General’s coat and joined Oswaldo in lighting the candles and lanterns. John Ruth held the door closed while waiting for Joe Gage and O.B. To return. Bob enjoyed a Manzana Roja. Domergue, however, hasn’t moved from her spot at the community dinner table since John Ruth uncuffed her. Let’s go back a bit. Fifteen minutes ago, Major Warren shot General Smithers in front of everybody. But, about forty seconds before that, something equally important happened…but not everybody saw it. While Major Warren was captivating the crowd with tales of Black Dicks in White Mouths, Somebody poisoned the coffee. And the only one to see him do it, was Domergue. That’s why this chapter is called, “DOMERGUE’s GOT A SECRET”.

…

Daisy [to John who just realized the coffee was poisoned]: When you get to hell, John, tell ‘em Daisy sent ya’…

…

Marquis: My theory Senor Bob is you’re working with the man who poisoned the coffee. And both of you murdered Minnie and Sweet Dave, and anybody else might’a picked the wrong day to visit the Haberdashery this morning. And your intention was, at some point, ambush John Ruth and free Daisy. But you didn’t expect the blizzard, and you didn’t expect the two of us.
[indicating Chris Mannix and himself]
Marquis: That’s as far as I got. How am I doin’?
Bob: You’re a real imaginative nigger, ain’t you? So do you intend to murder me based on a far-fetched nigger theory, or can you prove it, cabron?
Marquis: It ain’t so far fetched, Senior Bob. And it’s a little bit more then my theory.

…

Marquis: How long you say you been working for Minnie’s?
Bob: Four months.
Marquis: If you would have been here two and half years ago you’d know about the sign usta’ hang above the bar. Minnie mentioned that to you?
Bob: No.
Marquis: You know what that sign said, Senior Bob? “No dogs or Mexicans allowed” Minnie hung that sign up the day she opened this Habadashery. And it hung over that bar every day till she took down, a little over two years ago. You know why she took it down? She started lettin’ in dogs.[/b]

Cue the first stagecoach…

[b]Minnie: Sweet Dave.
Sweet Dave: What?
Minnie: Ask me if my ass is fat!
Sweet Dave: It is.
Minnie: I said ask me.
Sweet Dave: Why?
Minnie: Just do it!
Sweet Dave: Is your ass fat?
Minnie: Oui. Look at that y’all, I can speak French.

…

Jody: Well old man, if you was a cat what just happened here would count as one of your nine lives. You realize how close you came to being tossed on a pile of niggers?
Sandy: Yes.
Jody: And when it comes to that pile of niggers we building out back, won’t take nothin’ to make you General of it. You believe that?
Sandy: I expect no less.

…

Jody: Now do you have any reason why you would want to interfere with me saving my sister from a hangman’s rope?
Sandy: No.
Jody: You don’t?
Sandy: No I don’t.
Jody: You sure you don’t? I mean we did just kill Minnie and Sweet Dave. And you and Sweet Dave looked mighty chummy over there.
Sandy:: I just met these people, I don’t give a damn about them! Or you, or your sister. Or any other son of a bitch in Wyoming for that matter.
Jody: That is a good answer, old man.

…

Narrator: During the next four hours, Jody and the boys chuck the bodies down the well. Put away the horses. Tidied around Minnie’s. Stash weapons for further use. And waited for John Ruth and Daisy’s Stage to arrive.

…

Daisy: Chris I’m tellin’ you, you ain’t done anything yet, we can’t forgive. So let’s make a deal?
Marquis: No deals, bitch!
Daisy: You gonna’ let that nigger speak for you, Chris?
Chris: Hold it Warren. Seein’ as she ain’t got nothin’ to sell, I’m kinda curious about her sales pitch, humor me.

…

Chris [to Daisy]: So, you were sayin’…

…

Marquis [about Daisy as she’s laying on the floor]: No, don’t shoot her!
Chris: Why the hell not?
Marquis: John Ruth…Now, John Ruth was one mighty, mighty bastard. But the last thang that bastard did before he died was save your life. We gonna die, white boy. We ain’t got no say in that. There is one thang left we have to say here; and that’s how we kill this bitch. I say shootin’s too good for her. John Ruth could’a shot her any where, any time along the way, but John Ruth was “The Hangman,” and when “The Hangman” catches you, you don’t die by no bullet. When the The Hangman catches you you hang.
Chris [quoting John]: “You only need to hang Mean Bastards. But Mean Bastards, you need to hang”.[/b]

This one is all about the gap between the identity that we assume and the identity that can come crashing down on us when all that we assume is nothing at all as it actually is.

Anna is an orphan. She is raised by nuns in a Catholic convent. She is on the road to become one of them herself.

And then she is told that she is a Jew.

Now, given the manner in which I construe these things that would mean very little. Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Moslem, Hindu, whatever. It is merely a frame of mind that is imposed on children at a particular time and in a particular place.

But few are like me. For others, such news can come to have considerable consequences. And this revolves by and large around the need that many have to anchor their identity to something that is more than just an existential contraption. “I” must be rooted to/in necessity. You do what you do because it is in sync with what you must do on this side of the grave in order to achieve immortality and salvation on the other side of it.

Here though that is all basically on the surface. You can have others impose an identity on you. And then you can come to impose one on yourself.

And this is Poland. 1962. So there’s the part played by Communism. And before that the part played by Fascism. The part where you render [as you must] unto the State. Or [for some] the part where you try to accomodate both: God and Caesar.

It’s all surreal: Anna can go forward into the future as a Roman Catholic nun. Or she can go back into the past as a Jew – as Ida – and connect the dots between the past, the present and the future so as to change everything. For the better? For the worst?

Like there is actually something that can come to reflect the Right Answer here.

This movie won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2014.

IMDb

[b]Pawel Pawlikowski had such difficulty finding an actress to play the titular character that he asked his friends to take secret photographs if they saw anyone who was in the right ballpark of the character. One of his friends, director Malgorzata Szumowska, saw Agata Trzebuchowska in a Warsaw café, took the picture and persuaded her to audition.

Near the end of the film, in the scene where Wanda lays out photos of deceased relatives, the photo third row down, far left, is that of Irena Sendlerowa, a nurse and social worker who led a secret operation that saved the lives of 2,500 children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto during WW2.

Despite playing a woman on the cusp of becoming a nun, actress Agata Trzebuchowska is an atheist.[/b]

A very pretty atheist though.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_(film
Trailer: youtu.be/oXhCaVqB0x0

IDA [2013]
Written in part and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Mother Superior: Her name is Wanda Gruz. She is your aunt. We wrote to her many times asking her to take you. But she never did.
Anna: Maybe she never got the letters?
Mother Superior: She did. Because finally she replied that she couldn’t come. You should meet her before you take your vows. She is your only living relative.
Anna: Do I have to, Mother?
Mother Superior: Yes, Anna. You will go to see her and stay there for as long as necessary.

As necessary for what? And there’s the crux of it. Existentially, the snowball starts to roll down the hill.

[b]Wanda: What did they tell you about me?
Anna: That you are my aunt.
Wanda: That’s all? They didn’t tell you who I am? What I do?
Anna: No.

…

Wanda: So you are a Jewish nun.
Anna: Who?
Wanda: You’re a Jew. They never told you? Your real name is Ida Lebenstein. You’re the daughter of Haim Lebenstein and Roza Herc. You were born in Piaski, near Lomza.

…

Anna: I’m going to Piaski tomorrow. I want to visit their graves.
Wanda: Your parents have no graves. Neither they, nor any other Jews. No one knows where their bodies are…Maybe in the woods or in the lake.
Anna: I’ll ask around.
Wanda: What if you go there and discover there is no God?
[Anna turns to look at her but says nothing]:
Wanda: God is everywhere, I know.

…

Wanda: Do you have sinful thoughts sometimes?
Anna: Yes.
Wanda: About carnal love?
Anna: No.
Wanda: That’s a shame. You should try, otherwise what sort of sacrifice are these vows of yours?

…

Wanda: Did you know the Lebensteins? They lived here before the war.
Bartender: Jews?
Wanda: No, Eskimos.

…

Wanda: Our family used to live in this house.
Feliks: No Jews ever lived here.
Wanda: I didn’t say they were Jews.
Feliks: It’s my house and my land.
Wanda: We both know who it belonged to.

…

Anna: Who are you?
Wanda: Nobody these days. But I used to be a state prosecutor once. Big public trials. I even sent a few people to death.
Anna: Who?
Wanda: Enemies of the People. This was in the early fifties. Red Wanda - that’s me. Gone with the wind.

…

Wanda [showing Anna two dresses]: Which one do you want?
Anna: Neither.
Wanda: Come on, you won’t stop being a nun. Your Jesus didn’t hide in a cave with books but went out into the world.
Anna: I’m not going anywhere.
Wanda: What?
Anna: I’m not going anywhere.
Wanda: Fine, I’ll go out and have fun on my own.

…

Anna: I thought we were here because of my parents.
Wanda: We are. I loved your mother very much. You are so similar. I won’t let you waste your life.
[Anna refuses to respond]
Wanda: Of course…I’m a slut and you’re a little saint.

…

Wanda: This Jesus of yours adored people like me. Take Mary Magdalen…
[Wanda picks up the Bible]
Wanda: Let’s read…
[Anna wrestles the Bible from her]

…

Wanda: Remember me? You knew the Lebensteins during the war. We’d like to know where they’re buried.
Anna: I’m their daughter.
Szymon : Roza…
Anna: I’m Ida.
Szymon: They were…good people…I hid them in the woods…fed them…
Wanda: And then you killed them. Was he very scared?
Szymon: Who?
Wanda: The boy. How did you do it? With an axe?

…

Wanda [to Anna]: I left my son with Roza…and went to fight…for God knows what.

…

Feliks [to Anna]: Leave my father alone, let him die in peace. Nobody can prove anything anyway. What happened, happened.
Anna: What do you want?
Feliks: You give up claims to the house and I’ll show you where they’re buried…and you leave us in peace. Deal?
Anna: Yes.

…

Lis: What now? You’re going back to the institution?
Anna: You mean the convent? Yes.
Lis: For long?
Anna: Forever. I’m taking my vows next week. And you?
Lis: I’m mainly trying to avoid the army. And vows too.
[pause]
Lis: You’ve no idea of the effect you have, do you?

…

Anna: And me? Why am I not here in this grave?
Feliks: You were tiny…No one would know you were Jewish. I took you to the priest and left you there. The boy was dark and circumcised.

…

Feliks [to Anna]: It wasn’t father…I killed them.

…

Wanda [regarding the skulls that they have taken from the grave]: We’ll go to Lublin. We have a family grave there. If that graveyard still exists.
Anna: We should find a priest.
Wanda: You mean a rabbi.

…

Anna [back at the convent]: Will you come to my vows?
Wanda: No, but I’ll drink to your health.

…

Anna [to a statue of Jesus at the convent]: I’m not ready. Forgive me.

…

Government official [at the burial of Wanda after she jumped to her death]: Comrade Wanda Gruz contributed greatly to the creation of a new Poland tenaciously exercising People’s justice. She was a faithful handmaiden against anti-siocialism in the Polish nation. Farewell comrade…you’ll live forever in our memory.

…

Lis: What are you thinking about?
Anna: I’m not thinking.
Lis: We’re off to Gdask to do some gigs. Wanna come? Ever been to the seaside?
Anna: I haven’t been anywhere.
Lis: Come along then. You’ll listen to us play, we’ll walk on the beach.
Anna: And then?
Lis: Then we’ll buy a dog…get married, have children…get a house.
Anna: And then?
Lis: The usual. Life. [/b]

On the contrary…it’s back to God.

This just in…
slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ … _week.html

"… several thousand immigrants live in and around Rosarno while helping with the harvest of oranges and clementines…On the Gioia Tauro plain which encompasses Rosarno, they are collected each morning by overseers and driven into citrus groves for work that can last from dawn to dusk…“They earn €25 a day”, said Father Ennio Stamile of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas. 'They have to send money to their countries to maintain their families and also live here. Not much is left for them. The economic crisis has exacerbated their situation…On the plain, there are about 2,000 African immigrants who sleep the night crowded together in a former paper mill and another large building, said Monsignor Pino de Masi, the vicar-general of the Oppido-Palmi diocese. ‘If anyone from central government were to see the conditions in which they live, without sanitation, electricity, water or heating, they would not be surprised by what has happened.’ "

The Guardian, John Hooper 1/2/2010

This film basically revolves around this.

To be an immigrant in Europe these days is to be a political football. And this is a film that explores this reality from a distinctly liberal/left political perspective. That it happens to be a reflection of my own political prejudices is then more or less important. Depending of course on your own bias.

What’s important though is to recognize the obvious: that what motivates the overwhelming majority of folks who make this at times perilous journey is that they want to make their lives and the lives of their families better.

In other words, even for those who are opposed to their presence in their own nation, they would almost certainly be doing exactly the same thing themselves if they were in the shoes of the immigrants.

And this particular life and death struggle is based on the actual experiences of this man: Koudous Seihon.

Is it typical? Well, once again, political prejudices will be aired. More or less making that irrelevant.

And [as always] there is the racial factor. These are folks of color entering a nation that is predominantly white. And there are any number of citizens who are hell-bent on keeping it that way. And any number of politicians [think Trump] who aim to take advantage of it. Just as there are any number of businessmen who aim to take advantage of this cheap – very cheap – labor.

And long before they even reach Europe they have to contend with all of those among them who are only in it for themselves. The grifters, the thieves, the bandits, the moneymen. A grimly dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest world if there ever was one.

An ordeal? You tell me.

Still, the bulk of the film focuses more on the experience of living in a community of European immigrants – the good, the bad, the ugly.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranea_(film
trailer: youtu.be/HHf_2_k-v0w

MEDITERRANEA [2015]
Written and directed by Jonas Carpignano

Ayiva [on the phone to his family]: Take this money for now. It should help. Try to spend it slowly. Hopefully things will get better the further along we get. It’s so you can manage, for now. Right now, it’s tough, but it’ll get better.

That’s what this is all about for him and his loved ones: survival.

[b]Man [who – for a price – arranges the trips from Algeria to Libya to Italy]: Ayiva. Come here. Here’s your money.
[Ayiva starts to count it]
Man: Don’t count it in front of me. We don’t count money here.

…

Ayiva [on the phone to his sister Aseta]: Listen to me. It’s more dangerous than you think. I’m telling you, you can’t do it. I’m telling you, it’s too dangerous. You don’t know what I saw. It’s too dangerous for you and Zeina. I just got here. As soon as I make some money, I will send it to you.

…

Ayiva: Let’s go. Hey, Abas.
Abas: I don’t want to go. Let’s do this, and we’ll come back.
Mades: It’s very important. Hmm?
Abas: I know it’s important, but I don’t want to go!

…

Ayiva: What’s wrong? Hmm? What is it?
Abas [motioning toward their squallid living conditions]: Look around…
Ayiva: So? What do you want to do? You want us to go back? The others made it here. Just give it some time.

…

Orchard owner: How many times do I have to tell you! Eh? You fucking Africans! Because I hire you for a job, and you can’t even do it. I’m not paying for these cases. You understand?
Ayiva: I understand, but it’s his first day.
Orchard owner: I don’t care. That’s your problem, not mine.

…

Ayiva: Come! Let’s finish thisand go home.
Abas: I don’t understand you. This guy is a fucking asshole, and you wanna work twice as hard? For this shit job’?
Ayiva: You think you know better than me? You were there earlier. You saw everything, right? So what don’t you understand?
Abas: I already have my money.
Ayiva: Stop acting like a child. Man up. Do this, and we leave. It’s a small job, and we’re off.
Abas: You don’t look like a man. You look like his bitch.

…

Pia [handing Ayiva a box with headphones]: You like the color?
Ayiva: It’s perfect for my daughter.
Pia: Can I ask you something? Tell me. Is your daughter black?
Ayiva: Yes.
Pia: Where is she?
Ayiva: Africa.
Pia: Africa?
Ayiva: Yes.
Pia: That’s too far.
Ayiva: Yeah.

…

Ayiva: Aseta asked me if they could come here.
Mades: Come here for what? There’s nothing for women to do here. You know how it is. There’s no work for women here. You think you’ll make a home for them here? You know you’ll go back.
Ayiva: They want to come here. And it’s their choice. I can’t do anything.
Mades: I’m the one who brought you here. You’re here. You know you’re with family. I talk but you don’t listen.

…

Reporter [on TV]: This morning, police evicted African immigrants from the historic center of Rosarno. All this because the local residents wanted the immigrants cleared from their neighborhood.

…

Boss: Where are you off to next?
Ayiva: I don’t know where I’m going.
Boss: I can get you another job at Marta’s birthday party.
Ayiva: Can I ask you something? Can you help me get a work contract so that I can get
a residence permit?
Boss: I understand you, Ayiva. When my grandfather went to America, he was in New York City. He worked hard, really hard. But he earned almost nothing. He and his family had to take care of each other with his sisters, with his brothers, with his cousins. That’s how people should do it: Help one another.

…

Cristina [about Abas, who was nearly beaten to death]: If you’re looking for something positive, at least there’s this: He can get a residence permit on humanitarian grounds. It would last at least a year.[/b]

There’s something not quite right with her. Not quite right at all. And that might explain why she pulls into town and keeps being recognized by folks. As though she had been there before. But she knows that she never has been. Or she thinks that she knows that she never has been. It’s enough to make you suspect she might be crazy.

In other words, this is one of those “psychological thrillers” in which you are not really sure if the protagonist is in fact mad or is just being manipulated by others to believe that she is for their own purpose.

Is there a “meaning” here we are meant to grasp or is there really no meaning at all to grasp?

And what about that dead body in the trunk?

Dany. Prim and proper with her Christian cross necklace and thick glasses. Seemingly innocent and shy. A persona? Young and beautiful. And all the men she comes upon intent basically on one thing. You’re thinking: Maybe that’s what this is all about: the battle of the sexes?

Think of this one as Alfred Hitchcock Presents the Twilight Zone. It’s a narrative that could go in any number of directions [and at any time] and you are never really sure if what you are seeing is what is really going on.

From the perspective of others, in other words, it might be something entirely different.

And that’s before we get to the part that might include any possible…psychosis.

Above all else, it probes just how many different directions your own life might possibly go in. Especially if others are intent on manipulating you to see things from their own perspective. And In sync with their own ulterior motives.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_ … (2015_film
trailer: youtu.be/MvZMQ2cDBq0

THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN [La Dame Dans L’auto Avec Des Lunettes et un Fusil] 2015
Directed by Joann Sfar

[b]Dany [aloud to herself]: I’ve never seen the sea. I’ve never seen the sea. I’ve never seen the sea.

…

Dany [to herself in the mirror]: You’re just a pathetic secretary as blind as a bat.

…

Woman [out of the blue]: Feeling better? I ran after you to give you your coat earlier.
Dany: Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong person.
Woman: No, you had breakfast in my cafe. You left without your coat.
Dany: No you are mixing me up with someone else.
Woman: No, not at all. I could tell that you were not feeling well.
Dany: You’re very kind, but I promise you it wasn’t me. I was in Paris this morning.

…

Dany [aloud to herself]: You’re feeling guilty. Trying to scare yourself. Who’ll come looking on a bank holiday for some car that hasn’t even been stolen? Take the car back Tuesday. Have it cleaned. No one will ever know. No one.

…

Man from town: No one followed you into the restroom. We were all here. Who knows what happened, but we’d have seen this guy.
Dany: No, he pounced on me. He grabbed me.
Man: Did he…
Dany [shaking her head]: He crushed my wrist!
Service station attendant: That’s not true. You had that mark last night.
Dany: I wasn’t here last night. I was in Paris.
Service station attendant: No, you were here at my garage. I don’t know what you are playing at.
Dany: I was in Paris.
Service station attendant: I fixed the car’s brake lights.

…

Service station attendant [as Dany is about to leave town]: Forgive me, I lost control last night. You’re so attractive.
Dany: It wasn’t me.
Service station attendant: So, I apologized. Anyone can make a mistake. Help me out. Shake my hand. My daughter is watching. She is the apple of my eye.
[she shakes his hand]

…

Dany [talking to herself while driving]: What’s wrong? What are you afraid of? That people will think you are crazy?

…

Cop: So, Miss Doremus, out again, are we? You got the brake lights fixed. That’s good. A short circuit, was it? They’re working now. You had them fixed in Paris?
[Dany just looks at him dazed]
Cop: I’m talking to you. Did you have them fixed in Paris?
[Dany shakes her head]
Cop: Where?

…

Dany [talking to herself while driving]: How does he know my name? He can’t know it. I must have given my papers to the doctor. Or I told them my name at the garage. I can’t remember. They’re all in this together. I know what I did this morning…Your’e passing through a dream, Dany. And it’s someone else’s dream. Know what? You’ll go to this hotel. You’ll sleep and take the car back to Paris tomorrow. And everything will get back to normal. [/b]

One look at this hotel [not to mention its location] tells you that won’t happen.

Dany: Don’t you recognize me?
Hotel proprietor: Why? Should I?

Next up: Georges disconnects her battery.

[b]Georges: It’s a trick.
Dany: What is?
Georges: A trick on you.
Dany: You think so?
Georges: What else could it be? Don’t be afraid. You’re being fooled, that’s all.

…

Dany [talking to herself]: When did things start to go off the tracks? At the service station? Before then even, when that woman spoke about my coat? There has to be a point when it started.

…

Little boy: Who’s the man in your car?
Dany: There isn’t a man.
Little boy: There is, in the back.
Dany: Where?
Little boy [pointing toward the trunk]: There.
[Dany opens the trunk: a dead man]
Little boy: He’s asleep.

…

Dany [talking to herself while driving]: It’s not possible. You didn’t see properly. The trunk’s empty. Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!! I’ll go to the police. That’s the sensible thing to do. What will you tell them? That you picked up a killer who dumped a corpse in the car that you stole? Want to know the truth, Dany? Yes. It’s all in your mind. All in your mind. None of this really exists. It’s all in your mind.

…

Georges: Who is he?
Dany: You tell me that!
Georges: Don’t play this game! You risk more than I do.
Dany: What’ll you do?
Georges: Did you kill him?
Dany: No.
Georges: Someone put him in there. It wasn’t me. He was dead before I met you.

…

Georges: I stole your car to sell to a guy I know here. I may be a thief, and a bastard…but I’m not a killer!! Could your boss be a bit of a killer? Maybe the stiff was already in the car.
Dany: The trunk was empty.
Georges: You opened it?
Dany: Yes, a number of times.

…

Georges: Dany, did you kill him with the shotgun?
Dany: What shotgun?[/b]

The one in the trunk.

Dany [on phone]: Anita?
Anita: Yes?
Dany: It’s Dany. It’s terrible. Really terrible.
Anoita: Where on earth are you?
Dany: I’m lost.
Anita: Dany, what is going on?
Dany: I killed someone…

Another twist? You bet.

[b]Dany [talking aloud]: I know you’re there. The woman in the other car. She was injured. That’s why you attacked me. So I’d be like her. From the beginning, you made her follow the same road as me. She went everywhere before me, making people believe she was me. No, Dany, that’s impossible. No one could have known you’d take that road. Even I didn’t know.
[she hears someone in the house]
Dany: You were supposed to kill me in Paris? Is that it?
[Michel comes from behind and grabs her]
Michel: You’ll spoil everything.

…

Michel [on top of Dany, his hand around her throat]: I’m tired. I haven’t slept since you left, Dany. Everything’s fine. You haven’t killed anyone.
Dany: You’ve both lied to me from the beginning.
Michel: It’s not your fault, Dany. Anita had killed a man. They’d slept together. She had a lot to drink. His name was Kaub. Maurice Kaub. He was blackmailing her with photos he said he’s send to me.[/b]

Apparently, Dany has become part of his elaborate scheme to save them both from prison: Anita becomes Dany. But, again, by now, you simply have no idea what is really true.

[b]Michel: You were supposed to take the car back to Paris. Instead, you turned off.
Dany: I turned South. I just wanted to see the sea…

…

Michel: Do you see…you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t kill anyone.
Dany: I’m sorry. I only wanted to see the sea, that’s all.[/b]

She’s killed someone now. At least we think she has.