philosophy in film

The only thing political about this film is everything. The personal is political and the political gets personal. Somehow “I” has to fit in with “we” against “them”.

It would be difficult for many of us to put ourselves into the shoes of these women—Israeli soldiers. They are conscripted into the military and tasked with accosting Arabs. They are often loathed by the people they interrogate and search. The air sometimes drips with distrust and resentment. We pick a side then and the rationalizations begin.

CLOSE TO HOME:
Written and directed by Vardit Bilu and Dalia Hager

[b]Mirit: Do you think they look like Arabs?
Smadar: How in the hell am I supposed to know?
Mirit: I think we should go up to them.
Samdar: So go.

Dubek: Girls, the situation here is terrible. According to your reports, the Arabs have left the city…These reports have a very specific purpose. If there’s a terrorist attack, what do you think I can do with these papers?

Smadar: Maybe I don’t know what an Arab looks like.
Dubek to aide: Where are Smadar and Mirit today?
Aide: On the busses.
Dubek: I’ll be patrolling with you today. And I will show you what an Arab looks like.

[Mirit apprpaches bus passenger]
Passenger: Don’t start with me. Don’t even think about it. I’m sick of this, you and your friends. I’m sick and tired of all of you!
Mirit: Okay. All right. Sorry.
Passenger: The same everytime. No matter where the bus goes, it’s always the same![/b]

Beautiful people who get say what other people are paid to say for them.

[500] DAYS OF SUMMER
Directed by Marc Webb

[b]Narrator: In 1998, Summer quoted a song by the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian in her high school yearbook, “Color my life with the chaos of trouble”. This spike in Michigan sales of their album The Boy With the Arap Strap continues to puzzle industry analysts.

Tom: Why is it pretty girls always think they can treat people like crap and get away with it?
MacKensie: Centuries of reinforcement.

Tom: People don’t realize this, but loneliness is underrated.

Summer: We’ve been like Sid and Nancy for months now.
Tom: Summer, Sid stabbed Nancy, seven times with a kitchen knife, I mean we have some disagreements but I hardly think I’m Sid Vicious.
Summer: No, I’m Sid.

Vance: [reading a card that Tom has written] Roses are red, violets are blue… Fuck you, whore!

Tom: She took a giant shit on my face. Literally.
Alison: Literally?
Tom: Well, no, not literally. That’s disgusting. What’s wrong with you?

Summer: I named my cat after Springsteen.
Tom: Cool…what was his name?
Summer: Bruce.

Narrator: Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin and they end with no lasting memory made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life.

Tom: Nobody loves Ringo Starr.
Summer: That’s what I love about him.

Summer: Well, you know, I guess it’s 'cause I was sitting in a deli and reading Dorian Gray and a guy comes up to me and asks me about it and… now he’s my husband.
Tom: Yeah. And… so?
Summer: So, what if I’d gone to the movies? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? What if I’d gotten there 10 minutes later? It was - it was meant to be. And… I just kept thinking… Tom was right.
Tom: No.
Summer: Yeah, I did. [laughs] I did. It just wasn’t me that you were right about.

Vance: Misery, sadness, loss of faith, no reason to live…This is perfect for you.

Narrator: There’s only two kinds of people in the world. There’s women, and there’s men.

Summer: All we ever do is argue!
Tom: That is bullshit!

Summer: You guys need anything?
Tom: [provocatively] Oh, I think you know what I need.
Summer: [looks at Tom, quizzically]
Tom: Uh, some toner.[/b]

Spy vs. spy vs. spy

That it could happen to you may well be the whole point. And surveillance back then was still in its relative infancy.

THE CONVERSATION
Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola

[b]Mark: He’s not hurting anyone.
Ann: Neither are we.

Mark: Does it bother you?
Ann: What?
Mark: Walking around in circles.

Harry: What are you doing here?
Martin: Take it easy I’m just a messenger. I brought you a drink.
Harry: I don’t want your drink. Why are you following me?
Martin: I’m not following you, I’m looking for you. There’s a big difference

Harry: I don’t care what they are talking about. All I want is a big fat recording.[/b]

From the dream sequence:

Listen, my name is Harry Caul. Can you hear me? Don’t be afraid. I know you don’t know who I am, but I know you. There isn’t much to say about myself. I…I was very sick when I was a boy, I was paralyzed in my left arm and my left leg. I couldn’t walk for six months. One doctor said that I would probably never walk again. My mother…my mother used to lower me into a hot bath. It was therapy. One time the door bell rang, and she went down to answer. I started sliding down. I could feel the water. It started to come into my chin and into my nose. And when I woke up, my body was all greasy from the holy oil she used to put on my body. I remember being disappointed I survived. When I was five, my father took me to a friend of his, and for no reason at all I hit him right in the stomach. with all my strength. He died a year later. He’ll kill you if he gets a chance. I’m not afraid of death [long pause] I am afraid of murder.

Connection Machine:

youtube.com/watch?v=9kMyDjINpWA

[b]Harry [confessing in church]: …and I’ve been involved in some work that I think will be used to hurt these two young people. It’s happened to me before. People were hurt because of my—my work. I’m afraid it’s going to happen again…

Martin: [on the phone] We know that you know, Mr. Caul. For your own sake, don’t get involved any further. We’ll be listening to you. [plays back recording of Harry playing saxophone][/b]

Harry then proceeds to dismantle the apartment looking for the bug.

So, you can just imagine what we might find ourselves up against today.

There is no way I can “reasonably” pass judgment on the events here. I’m simply too fractured and fragmented in my reactions. But what is one who despises him here then obligated to do morally—never view his films again? distance themselves from those who support him?

ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED
A film by Marina Zenovich

[b]James: Anyway, that’s… - that’s fiction. And I think this probably may be still in the land of fiction, edging towards fact. When the… - when the newspapers and the magazines and the books talk about you and little girls, is there anything in it?
Polanski: Well, I-I like young women… - let’s put it this way… - and I think most of men do, actually.
James: Yeah, but the question… - the question turns on how young, doesn’t it?

Vannatter: He was, like, on a hyper high, and he’s constantly talking, constantly fidgeting. And he… - he didn’t perceive having intercourse with a 13-year-old girl as against the law. That… - that was not in his culture, that… - you know, “So what?” type thing. He didn’t… - he didn’t realize, I guess, the laws of our country as compared to other countries. I’m not so sure that Mr. Polanski was aware of what being arrested in America meant.

Brenneman: As the case progressed, I was struck… - you know, how could this same man be two different things to two different sets of press? The European reporters looked on Polanski as this tragic, brilliant, historic figure. Here was this man who had survived the Holocaust, who had survived the gassing of his mother and then had come here and developed his own voice, had maintained his integrity against the power of the Hollywood machine. And the American press tended to look at him as this sort of malignant, twisted dwarf with this dark vision.

Brenneman: They were the perfect attorneys to handle a case like this, where the evidence and the players were sensational, were dramatic, flamboyant. So you want two attorneys who kept an even keel. They were, in that regard, very strikingly different from the judge in the case.

Brenneman: At that time, rape victims’ names didn’t get reported in the press, much less the names of minors who were involved in sex cases. But with the European press there, her name would come out exposed in the press, her background exposed, the fact that she had had a prior relationship. She had taken quaaludes before. All of this had gotten out and would have forever haunted her.

Reporter: Once we knew her name, we knew where her school was, we knew where her house was, the French competition were after this girl. They were hunting this girl.

Samantha Geimer [victum]: It was awful. Everybody knew at school. People came to school with cameras and things were being said and printed. The worst part was, no one believed me. Everybody thought I was making it up.

Braunsberg: After Rosemary’s Baby, Roman had this reputation maybe having been a little bit in league with the devil himself.

Braunsberg: It was a Saturday, and the phone rang, and I picked it up, and it was our agent Bill Tennant who was on the phone, and I immediately realized that something was terribly wrong. I mean, he… - he was a very stable kind of guy. He was absolutely distraught. And I-I said, “What is it?” And he said, you know, something like, “They’re all dead. They’re all dead.” And I realized something awful had happened, and I gave the phone to Roman, and… I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, I saw somebody just disintegrate in front of my eyes.

Braunsberg: We flew to L.A. The next day. He was devastated, devastated to a point that I’ve never seen any other human being in that kind of condition…And I remember picking up Sunday newspapers. I was already reasonably aware of how the press functions, and their business is selling newspapers. The story was basically how Roman had flown to Los Angeles, murdered them all, and then come back. I mean, this was actually in the newspapers, in the headlines. The nature of the murders, you know, Satanism, Rosemary’s Baby. This is the guy who made Rosemary’s Baby. He knew so much about it. He couldn’t have known so much about it without actually being involved in it, and so he must have been part of the cult, and there was a cult, and they were murdered, and who gets murdered in this kind of way? And it was a typical example of the victims being responsible for their own deaths. It was shocking. It was truly unbelievable.

Polanski at news conference: The last day I talked to her was a few hours before the tragedy happened. You are suddenly curious about my relationship with Sharon within last few months. I can tell you the last few months, as much as last few years I spent with her… Were only time of true happiness in my life. And facts which will be coming out day after day will make a shame… - a lot of newsmen, who for selfish reason, write… - unbearable for me… - horrible things about my wife.

Polanski in an interview: …different people have different ways of seeing life and relationships. It’s not necessarily the same with you and me. And people, they react in different ways to grief. Some go to a monastery. Others start visiting whorehouses.

Gunson: The LAPD brought the evidence envelope to this courthouse building and brought it in, actually, to this room. There were about five, six, or seven men standing around, looking, peering down at this evidence envelope, and someone takes it and turns and opens it, and out falls these little girl’s panties.

Silver: And so there was this enormous court battle over property that belonged to her as to what was to be done with them. And Judge Rittenband decided to cut it in half and give half to the prosecution and half to the defense.
Dunson: The defense expert went over and put on his latex gloves and came back and then started operating on these copper panties.
Silver: If you can imagine the humor of about seven men sitting around a table…
Gunson: …trying to identify any stains and to make sure that the cut or the piece includes part of that stain.
Silver: And they were fighting and, "No, no, it has to be just a little to this way. “No, it should be over here. We shouldn’t cut that way at all.” So finally they… - they made the cut.

Mollinger: Roman called me; he said, “Listen, I mean, I’m here in Munich. Can we meet?” I said, “Of course.” And we decided to go in the evening to see the Oktoberfest. Roman actually didn’t want to go, but we said, "You have to see that, "because this is unbelievable. “You have never seen 10,000 people in a tent, drunken. I mean, you must see that.” And he said, “Okay.” He said, “I go with you.” So finally, we went to a special box. I was with my girlfriend and two other girlfriends, you know.
Braunsberg: Most unfortunately, he was photographed caught in a pose where sitting in between two girls. It was quite innocent. But, you know, photographs… - they say a photograph doesn’t lie. Nothing lies more than a photograph.
Semple: Roman always did have bad luck. And this is the kind of thing that a… - a cautious person would not have dreamed of doing. I mean, they would have had themselves photographed in the cathedral or doing something like that. That one photograph changed everything.

Gunson: I was quite surprised. Everyone in the criminal justice system is aware that 90-day diagnostic studies take less than 90 days. There’s not very many people, I would guess, who have had the experience of it only being 42.

Vannatter: That’s not a punishment. A punishment… - you know, he was charged with very serious crimes. You’re talking about crimes that… - that would incur state prison time, maybe 10, 15, 20 years in state prison…13-year-old girl, where he had sexual intercourse with her, sodomized her, gave her drugs, gave her alcohol. He got off with nothing.[/b]

Then the politics really begins.

Geimer: I was young, but the way I felt was, the judge was enjoying the publicity, and he didn’t care about what happened to me, and he didn’t care about what happened to Polanski. He was, like, orchestrating some little show, you know, that I didn’t want to be in.

Let right be done!

And it should be done…when something either is or is not right.

And at all cost…when one can afford to pursue it.

A shining example of what can become the sheer complexity of virtue. Even among the ruling class.

THE WINSLOW BOY
Written and directed by David Mamet
Based on an actual case.

[b]Sir Robert: I wept today because right had been done.
Catherine: Not justice?
Sir Robert: No, not justice. Right. Easy to do justice. Very hard to do right.

Sir Robert: I suggest your whole testimony is a lie.
Ronnie: No, it’s the truth.
Sir Robert: I suggest there is barely one single word of truth in anything you’ve said either to me or to the Judge Advocate or to the Commander. I suggest that you broke into Elliot’s locker, that you stole the postal order for five shillings belonging to Elliot, that you cashed it by means of forging his name.
Ronnie: I didn’t. I didn’t.
Sir Robert: I suggest that you did it for a joke, meaning to give him the five shillings back, but when you met him and he said he’d reported the matter you got frightened and decided to keep quite.
Ronnie: No, no. It isn’t true. It isn’t true. None of it is true.
Sir Robert: I suggest that by continuing to deny your guilt you’re causing great hardship to your own family and considerable annoyance to high and important persons in this country.
Catherine: That is a disgraceful thing to say.
Sir Robert: I suggest that the time has at last come for you to undo some of the misery you have caused by confessing to us all now that you are a forger, a liar, and a thief!
Catherine: How dare you!
Ronnie: I’m not. I’m not. I didn’t do it.
Arthur: This is outrageous, sir.
Ronnie: I didn’t do any of it.
Sir Robert: Send all his files here by tomorrow morning.
Desmond: But will you need them now?
Sir Robert: Oh, yes. The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief.

Catherine: What happened during the first examination to make you so sure if he is innocent?
Sir Robert: Three things. First of all, he made far too many damaging admissions. A guilty person would have been much more careful and on his guard. Secondly I laid him a trap and thirdly left him a loophole. Anyone who was guilty would have fallen into the one and darted through the other. He did neither.
Catherine: The trap was when you asked him suddenly what time Elliot put the postal order in his locker, wasn’t it?
Sir Robert: Yes.
Catherine: And the loophole?
Sir Robert: I then suggested to him that he’d stolen the postal order for a joke which had he been guilty I’m quite sure he would have admitted to as being the lesser of two evils.

A cartoon of the day:

Sign posted outside a hotel: NO CHILDREN. NO PETS. NO DISCUSSION OF THE WINSLOW CASE.

Grace: My worries? What do you know about my worries?
Arthur: A good deal, Grace. But I think they would be a lot lessened if you faced the situation squarely.
Grace: It won’t be easy for her to find another place.
Arthur: The facts, at this moment, are that we have a half of the income we had a year ago and we’re living at nearly the same rate. Whichever you look at it that’s bad economics.
Grace: I’m not talking about economics, Arthur. I’m talking about our live - things we took for granted a year ago and which now don’t seem to matter any more.
Arthur: Such as?
Grace: Such as a happy home and anonymity and an ordinary respectable life. There’s your return for it, I suppose. I only pray to God you know what you’re doing.
Arthur: I know exactly what I’m doing, Grace.
Grace: Do you, Arthur? He’s perfectly happy. He’s at a good school, he’s doing very well. No one need ever have known about Osbourne, if you hadn’t shouted it out to the whole world. As it is, whatever happens now, he’ll be known as the boy who stole that postal order.
Arthur: He didn’t steal that, Grace.
Grace: You talk about sacrificing everything for him, when he’s grown up he won’t thank you for it, Arthur. Even though you’ve given your life to - publish his innocence- as you call it. Yes, Arthur, your life. You talk gaily about arthritis and a touch of gout. You know better than any of the doctors what is the matter with you. You’re destroying yourself, Arthur, and me and your family besides. For what, I’d like to know? For what?
Arthur: For justice, Grace.
Grace: Are you sure that’s true? Are you sure it isn’t pride and self-importance?
Arthur: No, I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.
Grace: No. I’m not going to cry and say I’m sorry and make things up again. I can stand anything if there is a reason for it. But for no reason at all, it’s unfair to ask so much of me. It’s unfair!

Sir Robert: Oh, you still pursue your feminist activities?
Catherine: Oh yes.
Sir Robert: Pity. It’s a lost cause.
Catherine: Oh, do you really think so, Sir Robert? How little you know about women. Good-bye. I doubt that we shall meet again.
Sir Robert: Oh, do you really think so, Miss Winslow? How little you know about men.[/b]

If you are a certain kind of person, you can have these problems too.

MANHATTAN
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Isaac: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Y’know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y’know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them.
Party Guest: There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op Ed page of the Times, it is devastating.
Isaac: Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point.
Party guest: But biting satire is better that physical force.
Isaac: No, physical force is better with Nazis. It’s hard to satirise a guy with shiny boots.

Isaac: We were downstairs. We saw the photography exhibition. - Absolutely incredible. - It’s really good.
Mary: Really? - The photographs downstairs?
Isaac: Yes. - Great. Absolutely great. Did you?
Mary: No, I really felt it was very derivative. To me it looked like it was straight out of Diane Arbus, but it had none of the wit.
Isaac: Well, we didn’t like it as much as the Plexiglas sculpture.
Mary: You liked the Plexiglas?
Isaac: You didn’t like the Plexiglas either?
Mary: Uh, no…
Isaac: It was a lot better than that… that steel cube. Did you see it? That was the worst.
Mary: Now that was brilliant to me.
Isaac: The cube was brilliant?
Mary: Yes. To me it was very textural. You know what I mean? It was perfectly integrated and it had a… a marvellous kind of negative capability. The rest of the stuff was bullshit.

Mary: What do you do, Tracy?
Tracy: I go to high school.

Yale: Mary and I have invented the Academy of the Overrated for such notables as - Gustav Mahler, - Isak Dinesen and Carl Jung. - Scott Fitzgerald. - Lenny Bruce. Can’t forget him, can we?
Mary: How about Norman Mailer?
Isaac: I think those people are all terrific…
Mary: Well, how about Vincent Van Goch?
Isaac [to Tracy] She said “Van Goch”?!
Mary: Or Ingmar Bergman?
Yale: You’ll get in trouble.
Isaac: Bergman? Bergman’s the only genius in cinema today, I think.
Yale: He’s a big Bergman fan.
Mary: God, you’re so the opposite. You write that fabulous television show. It’s so funny and his view is so Scandinavian. It’s bleak, my God. I mean, all that Kierkegaard, right? Real adolescent, fashionable pessimism. I mean, the silence. God’s silence. OK, OK, OK. I mean, I loved it when I was at Radcliffe, but, all right, you outgrow it…It is the dignifying of one’s psychological and sexual hang-ups by attaching them to these grandiose, philosophical issues…

Mary: Hey, listen, I don’t even wanna have this conversation. I’m just from Philadelphia, you know. I mean, we believe in God so… OK?
Isaac: What the hell does that mean?! What do you mean? [To Tracy] Does that make any sense to you at all?

Party guest: We were talking about orgasms.
Mary: Oh, no, please! I didn’t… I’m from Philadelphia. We never talk about such things in public.
Isaac: You said that before. I don’t know what it meant then either.
Party Guest: I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor said it was the wrong kind.
Isaac Davis: You had the wrong kind? I’ve never had the wrong kind, ever. My worst one was right on the money.

Mary: Don’t psychoanalyze me. I pay a doctor for that.
Isaac: Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor? I mean, you don’t get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?
Mary: All right, so he’s unorthodox. He’s a highly qualified doctor.
Isaac: He’s done a great job on you, y’know. Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka’s.

Isaac: You honestly think that I tried to run you over?
Connie: You just happened to hit the gas as I walked in front of the car?
Isaac: Did I do it on purpose?
Jill: Well, what would Freud say?
Isaac: Freud would say I really wanted to run her over, that’s why he was a genius

Isaac: They probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese, and mispronounce allegorical and didacticism

Yale: It’s just gossip, you know. Gossip is the new pornography.

Willie: Why can’t we have frankfurters?
Isaac: Because this is The Russian Tearoom!

Isaac: My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst.

Yale [reading aloud from Jill’s memoir]: Jesus, listen to this. “Making love to this deeper, more masterful female made me realise what an empty experience, what a bizarre charade sex with my husband was.”

Emily: [reading aloud from Jill’s memoir] “He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy, and nihilistic moods of despair. He had complaints about life but never any solutions. He longed to be an artist but balked at the necessary sacrifices. In his most private moments, he spoke of his fear of death, which he elevated to tragic heights when in fact it was mere narcissism.”

Jill: I wrote some nice things about you.
Isaac: Like what? What?
Jill: You cry when you watch Gone With The Wind.

Isaac: You look so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter.

Tracy: Have you been seeing someone?
Isaac: No. Yes. Someone older. I mean, y-y-you know, y-y-you know. Not as old as I am, but in the same general ballpark as me.
Tracy: Gee, now I don’t feel so good.
Isaac: It’s not right. You shouldn’t get hung… I mean, you should open up your life. You know, you’ve got to.
Tracy: You say it like it’s to my advantage, when it’s you that wants to get out of it.

Tracy: I can’t believe you met somebody you like better than me.

Isaac: Hey, come on, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Come on, don’t cry. Tracy… Tracy, don’t… Come on. Don’t cry, Tracy. - Tracy…
Tracy: Leave me alone.
Isaac: Tracy, come on, don’t…
Tracy: Leave me alone!

Mary: I never thought I was very pretty. Oh, what is pretty anyway? I hate being pretty. It’s all so subjective anyway. The brightest men just drop dead in front of a beautiful face. When you climb into the sack, if you’re a bit giving, they’re so grateful.
Isaac:
Yeah, I know I am.

Mary: Facts. I got a million facts at my fingertips.
Isaac: They mean nothing cos nothing worth knowing is understood with the mind. Everything valuable enters through a different opening, if you’ll forgive the disgusting imagery.
Mary: I don’t agree at all. Where would we be without rational thought?
Isaac: You… you… you rely too much on your brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.

Mary: God, what a surprise. I cannot get over it. My ex-husband. And he really does look a lot thinner. He looks great.
Isaac: You certainly fooled me. I was shocked cos that’s not what I expected.
Mary: What did you expect?
Isaac: I don’t know. You had always led me to… You said he was a ladies’ man, that he opened you up sexually.
Mary: So?
Isaac: So? - Then this little homunculus, you know…
Mary: He’s quite devastating.
Isaac: Really? Well, it’s… it’s amazing how subjective all that stuff is.

Mary: I think I’m still in love with Yale.

Yale: You are so self-righteous, you know. I mean we’re just people. We’re just human beings, you know? You think you’re God.
Isaac: I… I gotta model myself after someone.

Isaac: What are you telling me? That you’re gonna leave Emily and run away with the… the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity Award?
Yale: Look, I love her.
Isaac: What kind of crazy friend are you?
Yale: A good friend. I introduced you two.
Isaac: Why? What was the point?
Yale: Cos I thought you liked her!
Isaac: I do! Now we both like her!!
Yale: Yeah, well, I liked her first.
Isaac: “I liked her first.” What are you, six years old?!!

Yale: I’m not a saint, OK?
Isaac: You’re too easy on yourself. Don’t you see? You’re… You rationalise everything. You’re not honest with yourself. You talk about you wanna write a book, but in the end you’d rather buy a Porsche. You cheat a little bit on Emily and you play around the truth with me. The next thing you know you’re in front of a Senate committee naming names.

Isaac: An idea for a short story about, um, people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves cos it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about… the universe. Let’s… Well, it has to be optimistic. Well, all right, why is life worth living? That’s a very good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile. Like what? OK… for me… Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing. And Willie Mays. And… the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony. And… Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues. Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental Education by Flaubert. Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Those incredible apples and pears by C?anne. The crabs at Sam Wo’s. Tracy’s face…[/b]

Morality “up there” meets reality “down here”. Yet again.

SEPARATE LIES
Directed by Julian Fellowes

[b]James: [to Maggie] Why’d you tell people? They wouldn’t have found out.
Maggie: That’s a Londoner talking.

James [narrating]: No life is perfect, though it may seem to be. Secrets and discontents lie hidden beneath the smoothest surface. In this, as in so many things, my life was no exception.

Bill: I assume it’s asking too much to expect you just to leave it alone:
James: Yes, it is.
Bill: Why is it?
James: Well, at the risk of sounding stuffy I like to do the right thing. It’s the way I am…Can I rely on you to turn yourself in?
Bill: You know, this will cause my father and my children a great deal of suffering. I know you don’t believe me but I am extremely sorry the accident took place…
James: So you will telephone the police today?
Bill: Tomorrow.[/b]

Then…

James: I had lunch with Bill Bule today. I asked him about the accident. He said he was responsible for it. He did it. It was his fault.
Anne: So, what happens next?
James: What do you think happens next. He goes to the police. They bring charges.
Anne: And all that’s absolutely necessary?
James: Yes, it’s absolutely necessary.
Anne: How would it help?..Bill’s made a mistake, a horrible tragic mistake, and a man is dead but…it’s not as if he’ll do it again.
James: That’s ridiculous.
Anne: Then there’s his father and the boys—what about them? You really want to wreck all those lives?
James: I don’t see that I’ve got a choice.
Anne: You do have a choice…You can leave it to Bill whether or not he goes to the police.
James: I don’t understand you. Of course I can’t leave it up to Bill. What about Maggie? Last week you were sobbing all over her in the hospital. Now you want to hide her husband’s killer. You’re being nonsensical.
Anne: You sure?
James: What is this? Am I missing something?
Anne: Yes. I was with him. In the car. I was with him.

And then it gets even more convoluted than that:

Anne: I was driving.

That, as they say, changes everything: James immediately comes down off his high horse.

[b]James: …they haven’t got much to go on. Even if Maggie gets the car right, it won’t tell them much. Nothing they can make stick.
Anne: They can if I help them.
James: You’re not going to prison.
Anne: I’ve done wrong. I ought to be punished.
James: Well, that’s very noble of you, but, uh, the problem is you won’t be the only one to take the punishment.
Anne [imagining out loud the future headline]: “Top solicitor’s wife in hit-and-run killing.”
James: Exactly.

Anne: Why was it different for Bill?
James: What?
Anne: Well, you didn’t mind his family being involved. Why is it different for me?

James: Oh, fuck Bill!
Anne: That’s the thing really. I mean I do fuck Bill. Or rather he fucks me.
[James is then out in the garden retching]

Anne: Oh James, please don’t be like this.
James: Why not? How should I be? You can have “suicidal” “bitter” or “glad to berid of you.” Only I can’t manage the last, so, uh, I think I’ll stick to bitter…Now fuck off.

Anne: I’ve failed every test you’ve set me, but you keep setting them. Why?
James: I don’t know.[/b]

Then it all ends as happily as these things can.

Some people get this movie and some people don’t. Of course, there are lots of different ways to get it.

COOL HAND LUKE
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

[b]Captain (turning to Luke): Lucas Jackson.
Luke: Here, Captain.
Captain: Maliciously destroyin’ municipal property while under the influence. What was that? Luke: Cuttin’ the heads off parkin’ meters, Captain.
Captain: Well, we ain’t never had one of them. Where’d you think that was gonna get you?
Luke: I guess you could say I wasn’t thinkin’, Captain.
Captain: Says here you done real good in the war: Silver Star, Bronze Star, couple Purple Hearts. Sergeant! Little time in stockades. Come out the same way you went in: Buck Private. Luke: That’s right, Captain. Just passin’ the time.

Carr: Them clothes got laundry numbers on them. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any man forgets his number spends a night in the box. These here spoons you keep with you. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. There’s no playing grab-ass or fighting in the building. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playing grab-ass or fighting in the building spends a night in the box. First bell’s at five minutes of eight when you will get in your bunk. Last bell is at eight. Any man not in his bunk at eight spends the night in the box. There is no smoking in the prone position in bed. To smoke you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smoking in the prone position in bed… spends a night in the box. You get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet on the top… the top sheet on the bottom… and the bottom sheet you turn in to the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box. No one’ll sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sitting on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man don’t bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box. Any man loud talking spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me. I’m Carr, the floor walker. I’m responsible for order in here. Any man don’t keep order spends a night in…
Luke: …the box.
Carr: I hope you ain’t going to be a hard case.
Luke: [Smiles, shakes head]

Arletta: You know sometimes I wish people was like dogs, Luke. Comes a time, a day when the bitch just don’t recognize the pups no more, so she don’t have no hopes, no love to give her pain. She just don’t give a damn.

Dragline: Stay down. You’re beat.
Luke [struggling back to his feet]: You’re gonna hafta kill me…

Dragline: Where’d the road go?
Luke: That’s it. That’s the end.
Koko: But there’s still daylight left.
Dragline: (checking the sun) ‘Bout two hours left.
Loudmouth Steve: What do we do now?
Luke: (smiling) Nothin’.
Dragline: Oh, Luke, you wild beautiful thing! You crazy handful of nuthin’!

Luke: Well that oughta be easy for a genuine son of a bitch.

Captain: What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate.

Captain: Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men. It’s for your own good.
Luke: Wish you’d stop bein’ so good to me, cap’n.

Dragline: He ain’t in the box because of the joke played on him. He back-sassed a free man. They got their rules. We ain’t got nothin’ to do with that. Would probably have happened to him sooner or later anyway, a complainer like him. He gotta learn the rules the same as anybody else.
Luke: Yeah, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get.

Dragline: Knock it off, Luke. You can’t talk about Him that way.
Luke: Are you still believin’ in that big bearded Boss up there? You think he’s watchin’ us?
Dragline: Get in here. Ain’t ya scared? Ain’t ya scared of dyin’?
Luke: Dyin’? Boy, he can have this little life any time he wants to. Do ya hear that? Are ya hearin’ it? Come on. You’re welcome to it, ol’ timer. Let me know you’re up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it. [He looks around] I’m just standin’ in the rain talkin’ to myself.

Boss: Sorry, Luke. I’m just doing my job. You gotta appreciate that.
Luke: Nah - calling it your job don’t make it right, Boss.

Luke: I can eat 50 eggs.

Dragline: Why’d ya got to go and say fifty eggs for? Why not thirty-five or thirty-nine?
Luke: It seemed like a nice round number.
Dragline: That’s money you’re talkin’ about. What’s the matter with you?
Luke: Yeah, well, it’ll be something to do.

Alibi: You’re peeling his eggs!
Dragline: That’s right, Mister Alibi.
Society: He peels the eggs himself. That’s understood.
Dragline: You jus’ may be great at hangin’ paper around the big cities, but us country boys is not entirely brainless. When it comes to the law, nothin’ is understood.

Dragline: Come on, boy, come on, darlin’. You kin do her. Just let that ol’ belly sag and enjoy itself. Stay loose, buddy. Eight more, between you and everlasting glory. Little ol’ eggs, pigeon eggs, that’s all, fish eggs practically.
Loudmouth Steve: Carr? Time?
Carr: Six minutes to go, Dragline.
Dragline: (into Luke’s ear) Just shakin’ it down, that’s all, settlin’ them eggs down
Society: Forty-four…
Carr: Two minutes to time…
Dragline: All right now: get mad at them eggs! Eat 'em! Bite 'em! Gnaw on 'em!
Society: Forty-five.
Carr: One minute, thirty seconds.
Dragline: …just stuff 'em in there any ole how!..That’s it, that’s how to do it, chew, chew, chew!!

Carl: Forty-eight boss. One in the box, one in the bush.

Boy [looking at Luke’s chain]: How you take your pants off?

Boss Paul: That ditch is Boss Kean’s ditch. And I told him that dirt in it’s your dirt. What’s your dirt doin’ in his ditch?
Luke: I don’t know, Boss.
Boss Paul: You better get in there and get it out, boy.

Luke: Picture’s a phoney. I had it made up for you guys…
Loudmouth Steve: We saw it all. You had it made.
Luke: Nothing. Made nothing, had nothing. Couple of towns, couple of bosses. I laughed out loud once, he turned me in
Koko [pointing to the picture in the magazine]: But I got it here!
Luke: Oh, come on! Stop beating it! Get out there yourself! Stop feeding off me!!

Luke: Where are you?..WHERE ARE YOU NOW?!

Dragline [mimicking Luke]: “Don’t hit me, boss…don’t hit me. I’ll do whatever you say.” You an original, that’s what you are. Them mullet-heads didn’t even know you was fooling.
Luke: Fooling them, huh? You can’t fool them about something like that. They broke me. But they didn’t get my mind right. Not with no sticks. No sir.
Dragline: All that time you were planning on running again.
Luke: I never planned anything in my life.

Dragline: He was smiling… That’s right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn’t know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren’t a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he’s a natural-born world-shaker.[/b]

“Inspired by real events”, a tale that is veritably dripping with dasein. Really, anything can be rationalized.

Beliefs here are derived from an obscure psychological history; and it is believing itself that takes precedence over whatever the beliefs happen to be.

The religious mind and the myth of Sisyphus—how far apart are they?

THE BELIEVER:
Written and directed by Henry Bean

[b]Teacher: And God said… … ''Now take your son, your onIy son whom you Iove, Isaac,… …and go unto the Iand of Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice… …on a mountain that I wiII show you. ‘’ So, everyone, what’s reaIIy going on here?
Boy: It was a test of Abraham’s faith and devotion to God.
Teacher: Danny? As usuaI you have something to add?
Young Daniel: It’s not about his faith, it’s about God’s power. God says ‘‘You know how powerfuI I am?’’ ''I can make you do anything I want, no matter how stupid. ‘’ ''Even kiII your own son. ‘’ ‘‘Because I’m everything and you’re nothing.’’

Guy: People hate Jews, do you agree?
Daniel: The very word makes their skin crawl. They undermine traditional life, and they deracinate society. Just take a look at the greatest Jewish minds ever. Marx, Freud, Einstein. What have they given us? Communism, infantile sexuality, and the atom bomb.
Guy: Wow. Danny, this is great. You’re incredibly articulate. But one thing…how can you believe all of this…when you’re a Jew yourself?

Daniel: Let me put it this way. Do we hate them because they push their way in where they don’t belong? Or do we hate them because they’re clannish and keep to themselves? Because they’re tight with money, or because they flash it around? Because they’re Bolsheviks, or because they’re capitalists? Because they have the highest IQs, or because they have the most active sex lives? Do you want to know the real reason we hate them? Because we hate them. Because they exist. Because it’s an axiom of nature that just as man longs for woman, loves his children, and fears death, he hates Jews. There’s no reason. If there were, some smartass kike would try to come up with an argument, try to prove us wrong. And of course that would only make us hate them more. In fact we have all the reasons we need in three simple letters: J-E-W. Jew. Jew! You say it a million times, it’s the only word that never loses its meaning. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew.

Hate Counselor: Where do you think you’re going?
Daniel: We have nothing to learn from these people. They should learn from us.
Holocaust survivor: And what should we learn from you, Daniel?
Daniel Balint: Kill your enemy.

Teacher: OK, Danny, but if Hashem is everything and we are nothing,… …how then are we to judge His actions?
Young Daniel: We have free wiII and inteIIigence, which God aIIegedIy gave us.
Teacher: What are you taIking about? God never Iets Abraham kiII Isaac. He gives him the ram so he doesn’t have to.
Young Daniel: PersonaIIy, I think that’s a Iie.
Teacher: You think? Based on what?
Young Daniel: There’s Midrash supporting it. My father read a book by ShaIom SpiegeI,… …that said Isaac died and was reborn.
Teacher: No-one foIIows that Midrash.
Young Daniel: I do! I foIIow it. But OK, say God provided the ram. So what? Once Abraham raised the knife, it was as if he’d kiIIed him in his heart. He couId never forget that and neither couId Isaac. He’s traumatised. He’s a putz the rest of his Iife.

Daniel: Where’s your father now?
Carla: In a mental institution.
Daniel: Was he a Nazi?
Carla: l don’t know. We don’t talk about that. l don’t think he cares about all that stuff any more.
Daniel:What’s he care about?
Carla: Killing himself.

Holocaust survivor: He stuck his bayonet… …in my son’s chest… …and lifted him up, impaled on it. My son was three years old. He… He held him so that the blood spurting out of him fell on my face. The soldiers were laughing. And when the blood stopped, the sergeant pushed my son…off his bayonet, and said…‘‘There. You can have him now.’’
Daniel: What’d you do?
Hate Counselor: What are you trying to say?
Daniel: What did you do while the sergeant was killing your son?
Mrs Frankel: What could he have done?!
Daniel: What could he have done? The sergeant’s killing his kid! What could he have done? He could’ve jumped the guy, gouged his eyes out, grabbed his bayonet…
Mrs. Frankel: They would’ve shot him on the spot. He would’ve been dead in two seconds. Who are you to judge?
Daniel: So he’s dead? Big deal. He’s worse than dead now. He’s a piece of shit!

Mrs. Frankel: What would you have done if you had been there?
Daniel: Not what he did. Just stand there and watch?
Mrs. Frankel: How do you know? You’ve never been tested like he has. Here, in this rich, safe…stupid country, it is so easy to imagine oneself a hero. But you have no idea what it was like. You can’t conceive of it. Everything, all of Europe…was designed to break one’s will. Millions went to camps…many stronger, braver than you. They did nothing. Just as you would have done nothing.

Student: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Young Daniel: Fear of God makes you afraid of everything. All the Jews are good at is being afraid, at being sacrificed.
Student: Do you even beIieve in God?
Young Daniel: I’m the onIy one who does beIieve. I see him for the power-drugged madman that he is. And we’re supposed to worship this deity? I say, never!

Lina: We need intellectuals. We have enough thugs.

Billings: l read your piece. lt’s very smart. And very wrong.
Daniel: ln what ways?
Billings: Forget the Jewish stuff. lt doesn’t play any more. There’s only the market now and it doesn’t care who you are.
Daniel: People still need values and beliefs.
Billings: No, they don’t. Not the smart ones.

Carla: ‘‘Make no graven image of the Lord or the form of any figure… …of man or woman, or anything that looks like anything.’’ Because He’s not like anything. Not only can you not see Him or hear Him,… …but you can’t even think about Him? l mean, what’s the difference between that and Him not existing at all?
Daniel: There’s no difference.
Carla: l mean, Christianity’s silly, but at least there’s something to believe in. Or not believe. - ln Judaism, there’s nothing.
Daniel: Nothing but nothingness. Judaism’s not really about belief. lt’s about doing things. Keeping the Sabbath, lighting candles, visiting the sick.
Carla: And belief follows?
Daniel: Nothing follows. Cos you don’t do it because it’s smart,… …or stupid, or because you get saved, because nobody gets saved. You just do it because the Torah tells you to and you submit to the Torah.
Carla: That is fucked.
Daniel: Don’t swear in front of it, OK?
Carla: Why should l submit?
Daniel: You shouldn’t.
Carla: You think l should just because there’s no reason.
Daniel: l think you shouldn’t.
Carla: Judaism doesn’t even need a God. You have the Torah, that’s your fucking God.

Carla: l just wanted to try it.
Daniel: Why?
Carla: Because God commands it.
Daniel: I thought God didn’t exist.
Carla: Well, He commands it, whether He exists or not. Look, we can fight Him and be crushed, or we can submit.
Daniel: And be crushed.
Carla: But… What if… What if submitting, being crushed…being nothing, not mattering,…what if that’s the best feeling we can have?[/b]

One set of reactionary thugs [the government of the Shah of Iran] is displaced by another set of reactionary thugs [the Ayatollahs]. Behrani then becomes another fleck of detritus in the march of human history
A speck of sand in the fog that human interaction can become.

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG
Written and directed by Vadim Perelman

[b]Connie: $500? They evicted you from your house for that?
Kathy: You got it.

Kathy: My father left this house to me and my brother.
Behrani: Tell this to the bureaucrats at the County Tax Office. They have made a mistake, not I.
Kathy: They said they’d give you your money back. You’ve put that deck on. I’m sure they’d repay you for that.
Behrani: I’m sorry, but I’ve nothing more to say. Why should I be penalized for their incompetence? You should sue them for enough to buy ten homes. I’ll even sell you this house for the right price. That’s all I require.
Kathy: You can’t expect to just move in here and make money off of this. This is my house. I lived here, and you stole this house from me, you son of a bitch! [then to prospective buyers] This is a stolen house! He’s trying to sell you a stolen house!

Kathy: I miss my dad. He worked really hard for that house. It took him thirty years to pay it off. And it took me eight months to fuck it up!

Lester: [at Kathy’s car] So, how’s the El Rancho?
Kathy: I’m not there anymore. I’m staying at the Bonneville now.
Lester: I don’t know it.
Kathy: [dryly] You’re looking at it.

Cashier: Rough night, huh?
Kathy: Seems to be heading in that direction…

Lester: I’m talking about the disclosure law, Colonel. You, as the owner, have the obligation to tell all prospective buyers anything about the property they have a right to know.
Behrani: I do not understand.
Lester: You sure about that?
Behrani: Are you interrogating me, Mr. Gonzalez?
Lester: I don’t know. You tell me. I understand your friend, the Shah, made a habit of it.

Nadi: Who was that man? Tell to me, Behrani. What have you done?
Behrani: It’s none of your business what I have done. Have you no faith in me, no respect? That man said I must remove the sign.
Nadi: Coward! Liar!
Esmail: Mama.
Nadi: You kasif liar! It is your fault we were forced to flee from Iran. It is your fault we are here. Yours and your Savak friends!

Esmail: Why did that man say we would be deported?
Behrani: I do not know. But we are American citizens. We own this house. They can do nothing to us now.
Esmail: I feel bad for that lady, Bawbaw-jahn.
Behrani: The woman’s house was taken from her because she did not pay her taxes. That happens when one is not responsible.
Esmail: But…
Behrani: Do you understand? Do not feel bad. Americans they do not deserve what they have. They have the eyes of small children who are forever looking for the next source of distraction, entertainment, sweet taste in the mouth. We are not like them. We know rich opportunities when we see them and do not throw away God’s blessing.

Behrani: Please, God, don’t take my joon-am. I make my nazr. My nazr, hear me. Please to hear me. I will give everything to one who is less fortunate. Yes! I will make it for the broken bird. Please, God, I’m making nazr to this woman. To Kathy Nicolo. And I to you promise, if you heal my son, I will return her father’s house. I will also give to her all the money I have. My God, Khoda. I make nazr only for my son. Please, I want only for my son. I beg you, I will do whatever is your will. I will purchase ten kilos of the finest seed and find an American mosque, and I will feed them to all the birds outside. I will let the birds cover me and peck out my eyes. Please, God, my nazr is in your hands.[/b]

What else is there? But God has other plans.

Policeman: Are you Kathy Nicolo?
Kathy: Yeah.
Policeman: Is this your house?
Kathy: No, it’s not my house.

A film less about birth than death. And how the part in the middle – life – can be bursting at the seams with deceipt. Oh, and Nicole Kidman naked in the bathtub with a naked ten year old boy. Which “disturbed” many and became the focal point for many more. That’s when the film became about pedophilia.

At least the film was made. Can you imagine if it was the other way around: Anna had died and returned as a 10 year old girl.

BIRTH
Directed by Jonathan Glazer

[b]Voice of Sean: Ok, let me say this… If I lost my wife and, uh, the next day, a little bird landed on my windowsill, looked me right in the eye, and in plain English said, ‘Sean, it’s me, Anna. I’m back’ What could I say? I guess I’d believe her. Or I’d want to. I’d be stuck with a bird. But other than that, no. I’m a man of science. I just don’t believe that mumbo-jumbo. Now, that’s gonna have to be the last question. I need to go running before I head home.

Anna: You know I loved Sean so much, and its been so long that I still can’t get him out of my system. This is going to sound a little strange but I’ve met someone, who seems to be Sean. I really hoped that he was Sean. I wanted him to be Sean. But I knew he wasn’t…The thing is, I’m falling in love with Sean again. That’s what’s happening. I need you to tell him to go away. Because I can’t do it.

Bob: You know… if you were my brother-in-law, you’d say it was impossible for you to be sitting right here in front of me. You didn’t believe in life after death. You believed that only matter survives and that the mind, soul, spirit… whatever you want to call it… disappears forever.

Anna: How are you gonna fulfill my needs?
Sean: I know what you’re talking about.
Anna: You’re ready for that? You ever made love to a girl?
Sean: You’d be the first.

Clara: You’re not Sean.
Sean: Yes, I am.
Clara: When you opened the door for me yesterday…I knew you weren’t Sean.
Sean: Who are you?
Clara: I thought you said you’re Sean. I’m your lover.
Sean: Anna’s my lover.
Clara: I’m your lover. Anna’s your wife. If you had been Sean…and I kind of hoped you had…you would’ve come to me first. And I would’ve explored this. But you didn’t.

Anna: You certainly had me fooled. I thought you were my dead husband…but you’re just a little boy in my bathtub.

Anna [to Joseph]: What happened to me was not my fault. There’s no way I could’ve behaved any differently, you know. What I did… wasn’t my fault. What happened to me wasn’t my fault, and I can’t be held accountable for it. There’s no way I could ever have said to him…“Go away.” I couldn’t do it.[/b]

We’re the kids of America!!
Another slice of the elephant.
But I have always been a sucker for the “loner”.
In part, this film explores the gap between what does happen and what you think you’ll able be to convince others happens instead.
In this world you sometimes have to roll the dice. If only because explaining why it happened is deemed too fucking hard.

PARANOID PARK
Written and directed by Gus Van Zant

[b]Macy: They should be out now, dude.
Alex: What are you talkin’ about?
Macy: The war, Iraq, no? What do you think?
Alex: I really don’t care.
Macy: Geez… that’s the kind of thing that’s wrong with people today. Apathy…not caring
Alex: I don’t really know much about the war.
Macy: Figure it out, dude. Read the newspaper.
Alex: I hate reading the newspaper.

Alex: One appeal of a place like Paranoid was the kids that skated there. They had built the park illegally all by themselves. Trainhoppers… guitar punks… skate… drunks… throwaway kids… No matter how bad your family life was, these guys had it much worse.

Alex: Macy… you know there’s just… everybody’s parents get divorced. There’s… other problems. Bigger problems.
Macy: Like what?
Alex: Like… people dying in Iraq… starving kids in Africa.
Macy: Since when do you care about starving children in Africa?
Alex: Well, you know what I mean, just… the little problems, they’re just all so stupid.
Macy: Not if it’s happening to you.

Alex [struggling to come to grips with what happened]: He was trying to kill us. He had a lead bat. Why… why can’t you just understand that…God…you know…Call the police. It’s OK, Alex, you’re not gonna get in trouble. Call home…Call someone. It was self-defense. I thought about my skateboard…People defend themselves all the time. But never mind that…I had to tell someone. Maybe that was the thing…It’s OK, Alex. You’re not gonna get in trouble. It’s OK. Get a lawyer first…then call the police. That’s what sports people did…Just calm down, Alex… Didn’t it? My brain could have debates all night long. My body didn’t care. My body wanted only one thing, to get the hell out of there. Oh my god! Oh my god![/b]

There is a lot going on in this truly great movie but I always zero in on the Saleri Syndrome. That’s when someone who has a passion for doing something bumps into someone else who does it much better and with far greater ease. It is an unbearable point of view at times. The Sean/Will narrative is just okay. As is the Will/Skylar narrative. But the Will Hunting/Professor Gerry Lambeau narrative is nothing short of gut wrenching. That and the equally turbulent exchanges between Gerry and Sean.

Well, to me anyway.

GOOD WILL HUNTING
Directed by Gus Van Zant [Written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon]

[b]Student: Excuse me, Professor Lambeau?
Lambeau: Yes.
Student: I’m in your applied theories class. We’re all down at the Math and Science building.
Lambeau: It’s Saturday.
Student: I know. We just couldn’t wait 'till Monday to find out.
Lambeau: Find out what?
Student: Who proved the theorem.

Chuckie: So this is a Harvard bar, huh? I thought there’d be equations and shit on the wall

Chuckie: Are we gonna have a problem here?
Clark: No, no, no, no! There’s no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian pre-capitalist.
Will [interjecting]: Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ‘till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you’re going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That’s gonna last until next year; you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won’t, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social…
Will: “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth”? You got that from Vickers’ “Work in Essex County,” page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend - you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?..See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don’t do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!
Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree. And you’ll be servin’ my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.
Will: That may be, but at least I won’t be unoriginal. But I mean, if you have a problem with that, I mean, we could just step outside - we could figure it out.
Clark: No, man, there’s no problem. It’s cool.[/b]

I love the way this particular pedant is exposed…then pummeled. What Will has to learn though is that in his own way he is really not all that much different. He just goes to the library instead of the university.

[b]Sean: Do you have a soul mate?
Will: Define that.
Sean: Someone you can relate to, someone who opens things up for you.
Will: Sure, I got plenty.
Sean: Well, name them.
Will: Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Frost, O’Conner…
Sean: Well that’s great. They’re all dead.
Will: Not to me, they’re not.
Sean: You can’t have a lot of dialogue with them.
Will: Not without a heater and some serious smelling salts.

Sean: If you ever disrespect my wife again, I will end you. I will fucking end you. You got that, chief?
Will: Time’s up

Sean: Put it on my tab
Tim: You ever plan on paying your tab?
Sean: Yeah, chief. I’ve got the winning lottery ticket right here.
Tim: What’s the jackpot?
Sean: Twelve million.
Tim: I don’t think that will cover it.

Sean: Hey, Gerry, In the 1960s there was a young man that graduated from the University of Michigan. Did some brilliant work in mathematics. Specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went on to Berkeley. He was assistant professor. Showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana, and blew the competition away.
Lambeau: Yeah, so who was he?
Sean: Ted Kaczynski.
Lambeau: Haven’t heard of him.
Sean: [yelling to the bartender] Hey, Timmy!
Timmy: Yo.
Sean: Who’s Ted Kaczynski?
Timmy: Unabomber.

Sean: Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me… fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and haven’t thought about you since. Do you know what occurred to me?
Will: No.
Sean: You’re just a kid, you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talkin’ about.

Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally… I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you, I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Lambeau: Well, let’s see…Good…This is correct. I see you used McLauren here.
Will: Yeah, I dunno what they call it, but…
Lambeau: This can’t be right. It would be very embarrassing. Did you ever consider…
Will: I’m pretty sure it’s right.
Lambeau: But did you think of the possibility…
Will: It’s right. It’s right. Just take it home with you.

Sean: [yelling at Gerald] And why does he hang out with those retarded gorillas, as you called them? Because any one of them, if he asked them to, would take a fucking bat to your head, okay?

Lambeau: I think you could show me some appreciation.
Will: A little appreciation? Do you know how easy this is for me? Do you have any fuckin’ idea how easy this is? This is a fuckin’ joke. And I’m sorry you can’t do this. I really am because I wouldn’t have to fuckin’ sit here and watch you fumble around and fuck it up. Lambeau: Then you’d have more time to sit around and get drunk instead, wouldn’t you?
Will: You’re right. This is probably a total waste of my time.
Lambeau: You’re right, Will. I can’t do this proof. But you can, and when it comes to that it’s only about…it’s just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I’m one of them.
Will: Sorry.
Lambeau: Yeah, so am I. Most days I wish I never met you. Because then I could sleep at night, and I wouldn’t…and I wouldn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there’s someone like you out there…And I didn’t have to watch you throw it all away.

Will: Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ‘cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area” ‘cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ‘cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ‘cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain’t helping my buddy at three-fifty a gallon. And they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ‘til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ‘cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’, ‘cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

Sean: I teach this shit, I didn’t say I know how to do it.

Will: I mean, w-w-what’s wrong with layin’ brick?
Sean: Nothing.
Will: There’s nothing wrong—That’s some…that’s somebody’s home I’m building.
Sean: Right. My dad laid brick. Okay? Busted his ass so I could have an education.
Will: Exactly. That’s an honorable profession. What’s wrong with…with fixing somebody’s car. Someone can get to work the next day because of me. There’s honor in that.
Sean: Yeah, there is, Will. There is honor in that. And there’s honor in, you know, taking that forty minute train ride so those (college kids come) in the morning and the floors are clean and the wastebaskets are empty. That’s real work.
Will: That’s right.
Sean: Right. And that’s honorable. I’m sure that’s why you took that job, I mean, for the honor of it. I just have a little question here. You could be a janitor anywhere. Why did you work at the most prestigious technical college in the whole fuckin’ world? And why did you sneak around at night and finish other people’s formulas that only one or two people in the world could do, and then lie about it? Cus’ I don’t see a lot of honor in that, Will. So, what do you really want to do?

Will: What do I wanna way outta here for? I’m gonna live here the rest of my fuckin’ life. We’ll be neighbors, have little kids, take ‘em to Little League up at Foley Field.
Chuckie: Look, you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you’re still livin’ here, comin’ over to my house, watchin’ the Patriots games, workin’ construction, I’ll fuckin’ kill ya. That’s not a threat, that’s a fact, I’ll fuckin’ kill ya.
Will: What the fuck you talkin’ about?
Chuckie: You got somethin’ none of us have…
Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin’ owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don’t want to?
Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don’t owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be 50, and I’ll still be doin’ this shit. And that’s all right. That’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winnin’ lottery ticket. And you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that’s bullshit. ‘Cause I’d do fuckin’ anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin’ guys. It’d be an insult to us if you’re still here in 20 years. Hangin’ around here is a fuckin’ waste of your time.

Chuckie: Every day I come by your house and I pick you up. And we go out. We have a few drinks, and a few laughs, and it’s great. But you know what the best part of my day is? For about ten seconds, from when I pull up to the curb and when I get to your door, 'cause I think, maybe I’ll get up there and I’ll knock on the door and you won’t be there. No goodbye. No see you later. No nothing. You just left. I don’t know much, but I know that.[/b]

The real gangsters today work on Wall Street and on K Street. They use key strokes instead of guns. So, less blood has to flow. But, really, no less pain.

The story always revolves around power. Back then, here now.

On the other hand, ambiguity abounds from beginning to end. The end in particular: Max the elder, the garbage truck…then back in time again to that enigmatic smile plastered on Noodles face over the end credits.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
Directeecd by Sergio Leone

[b]Officer ‘Fartface’: Okay, boys, we’re even…
Young Noodles: The hell we are!
Young Max: You’ll be collecting your pension before we’re even!

Max: You’ll be carrying the stink of the streets with you for the rest of your life!
Noodles: I like the stink of the streets. It makes me feel good. And I like the smell of it, it opens up my lungs. And it gives me a hard-on.

Bugsy: [Bugsy and his gang have beaten Noodles and Max] You don’t work for me, you don’t work for no-one!
Young Max: I don’t like bosses.
Bugsy: You’d be better off you stayed in the Bronx.
Young Max: Woulda been better for you, too!
[Bugsy spits on him, and he and his gang walk off]
Young Max: I’m gonna kill him one of these days…
Young Noodles: Yeah? Meanwhile, it looks like he killed US!

Young Deborah: Fat, you better spray the toilet. I saw a cockroach in there.

Young Noodles: Who’re you calling a cockroach?
Young Deborah: So what are you? You’re filthy! You make me sick! You crawl up toilet walls just like a roach! So what are you?
[Noodles grabs Deborah] Young Deborah: Let go!
Young Noodles: I make you sick, huh? Then how come you showed me your tush?
Young Deborah: To a roach!

Young Deborah: Get down off of there, roach. That record’s just like Ex-Lax. Every time I put it on, you have to go to the bathroom.

Noodles: I thought you didn’t like bosses. It sounded like a good idea then. It still is.

Fat Moe: What’s this all mean?
Noodles: It means… …“Noodles, though you’ve been hiding in the asshole of the world, we found you. We know where you are.” It means…“Get ready.”
Fat Moe: For what? That’s the one thing it didn’t say.

Jimmy: You still won’t come and stop the workers or the social movement.
Chicken Joe: Listen to me, you socialist asshole! We don’t give a good fart about the socialist workers and their movements. We want you out of the factory so we can get the furnaces working again. This is the last offer you’re gonna get. You want to sign it or what?
Jimmy: Tell your bosses they can wipe their ass with it.
Chicken Joe: Fill her up.

Jimmy: Who are you? Who’s paying you?
Cockeye: I think this is gonna piss you off, Mac. I think it’s those dirty politician friends of yours.
Jimmy: Yeah? Well, you crawl back and tell 'em we don’t want you in with us. Our fight’s got nothing to do with liquor and prostitution and dope.
Max: I think you’d better get used to the idea, pal. This country is still growing up. Certain diseases it’s better to have when you’re still young.
Jimmy: You boys ain’t a mild case of the measles. You’re the plague.

Noodles [to Jimmy]: The difference is, they’ll always win. And you’ll keep getting it up the ass.

Reporter: Chief Aiello, moving policemen into the factory came as a surprise. The press, the unions, especially the strikers.
Police chief: What did you want, a declaration of war? Ours was a peaceable operation.
Reporter: Wasn’t that contrary to new union laws and the right to strike?
Police chief: I’m chief of police, not chief of people.
Reporter: Was there any violence to justify…?
Police chief: My motto is: “Prevention, not repression.”
Reporter: You let scabs move in and work.
Police chief: Young lady, you wanna talk to me, call them “unemployed workers.”

Police chief: …maybe you heard. I’m the father of a baby boy.
Reporter: We heard he’s the youngest stockholder in that factory you occupied.
Police chief: What’d you mean by that?
Reporter: They say management expressed their thanks with a present for the baby.

Sign on side of Bercovicz & Co. hearse: Why go on living when we can bury you for $49.50?

Noodles: I always thought you might have helped yourself to that million bucks. But now I know. Yeah, you’re on your ass worse than ever.
Fat Moe: But I thought it was you who…
Noodles: No, you thought wrong. The suitcase was empty.
Fat Moe: Then who took it?
Noodles: That’s what I’ve been asking myself for 35 years.

Carol: [looking at Noodles] Why don’t we make it a threesome, huh?
Max: Can’t you see he’s got other plans for tonight?
Carol: Well, bring her along! We’ll make it a foursome!
Noodles: I’m not that kind of guy. Besides, I’m afraid if I give you a good crack in the mouth, you’d probably like it…

Police chief: My son, where is he?
Noodles: Where do you think? He’s in the maternity ward. He never left. He got restless, so he wanted to change his bed. The other kids got the same idea, so they wanted to change their beds. You got screaming babies jumping from one bed to another…switching tags, so now we do have a real problem.
Police chief: Piece of shit whoever you are! What the fuck?! I want my son!

:banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance:

Patsy: You know what? You know, I wish I was switched when I was a kid.
Noodles: What makes you think you weren’t?

Noodles: I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t owe me a thing.
Max: Your eyes were too full of tears to see it wasn’t me burned up on that street. It was somebody else. You were too shocked to realize that the cops were in on it too. That was a syndicate operation, Noodles.

Max: I took away your whole life from you. I’ve been living in your place. I took everything. I took your money. I took your girl. All I left for you was years of grief over having killed me. Now, why don’t you shoot?

Noodles:…I have a story also. A little simpler than yours. Many years ago I had a friend, a dear friend. I turned him in to save his life…but he was killed. But he wanted it that way. It was a great friendship. It went bad for him, and it went bad for me too. Good night, Mr. Bailey.[/b]

What exactly is a reservoir dog? Well, you’ll know if you ever cross paths with one in a jewelery store. Also, the expression “dog eat dog” becomes abundantly clearer. Finally – and this is driven home with a vengence – what you think is true is all that is necessary to motivate your behavior. Rather than, say, what actually is true.

Oh, and psychopaths can be truly scary.

RESERVOIR DOGS
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

[b]Eddie: C’mon, throw in a buck!
Mr. Pink: Uh-uh, I don’t tip.
Eddie: You don’t tip?
Mr. Pink: Nah, I don’t believe in it.
Eddie: You don’t believe in tipping?
Mr. Blue: You know what these chicks make? They make shit.
Mr. Pink: Don’t give me that. She don’t make enough money that she can quit.
Eddie: I don’t even know a fucking Jew who’d have the balls to say that. Let me get this straight: you don’t ever tip?
Mr. Pink: I don’t tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I’ll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it’s for the birds. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just doing their job.
Mr. Blue: Hey, our girl was nice.
Mr. Pink: She was okay. She wasn’t anything special.
Mr. Blue: What’s special? Take you in the back and suck your dick?

Mr Pink: I’ve known Joe since I was a kid. But me saying Joe definitely couldn’t have done it is ridiculous. I can say I definitely didn’t do it, cause I know what I did or didn’t do. But I can’t definitely say that about anybody else, 'cause I don’t definitely know. For all I know, you’re the rat.
Mr. White: For all I know, you’re the fuckin rat!
Mr Pink: Now you’re using your head.

Mr. Orange: What happens if the manager won’t give you the diamonds?
Mr. White: When you’re dealing with a store like this, they’re insured up the ass. They’re not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he’s Charles Bronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that. You might get some bitch talk shit to you, but give her a look like you’re gonna smash her in the face next, watch her shut the fuck up. Now if it’s a manager, that’s a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that’s giving you static, he probably thinks he’s a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a bitch in two. If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb’s next. After that he’ll tell you if he wears ladies underwear. I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco.

Marvin: That fuck! That sick fuck! That fucking bastard!
Mr. Orange: Marvin, I need you to hold on. There’s cops waiting less than a block away.
Marvin: What the fuck are they waiting for? This fucking guy slashes my face, and he cuts my fucking ear off! I’m fucking deformed!
Mr. Orange: [yells] FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I’M FUCKIN’ DYING HERE! I’M FUCKIN’ DYING!

Marvin: I already told you I don’t know anything about any fucking setup; you can torture me all you want.
Mr. Blonde: Torture you? That’s a good idea. I like that.

Mr. Pink: You kill anybody?
Mr. White: A few cops.
Mr. Pink: No real people?
Mr. White: Just cops.

Mr. Blonde: Listen kid, I’m not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don’t give a good fuck what you know, or don’t know, but I’m gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It’s amusing, to me, to torture a cop. You can say anything you want cause I’ve heard it all before. All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain’t gonna get. [He removes his razor]

Marvin: Please! Please… Don’t burn me, man.
Mr. Blonde: You all through? You all through?
Marvin: Look, I… I got a little kid at home. Now, PLEASE.
Mr. Blonde: [holding up a lighter] No, no, no, no, no, no. You all done? You all done? How 'bout a little fire, Mr Scarecrow?

Mr. Brown: I’m blind, man. I’m fucking blind.
Mr. Orange: You’re not blind, you’ve just got blood in your eyes.

Cop # 1: There goes our boy.
Cop #2: I swear, a guy has to have rocks in his head the size of Gibraltar to work undercover.

Joe: With the exception of Eddie and myself, whom you already know, we’re going to be using aliases on this job. Under no circumstances do I want any one of you to relate to each other by your Christian names, and I don’t want any talk about yourself personally. That includes where you been, your wife’s name, where you might’ve done time, or maybe a bank you robbed in St. Petersburg. All I want you guys to talk about, if you have to, is what you’re going to do. That should do it. Here are your names…
[pointing to each respective member]
Joe: Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
Mr. Pink: Why am I Mr. Pink?
Joe: Because you’re a faggot, alright?
Mr. Pink: Why can’t we pick our own colors?
Joe: No way, no way. Tried it once, doesn’t work. You got four guys all fighting over who’s gonna be Mr. Black, but they don’t know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You’re Mr. Pink. Be thankful you’re not Mr. Yellow.
Mr. Brown: Yeah, but Mr. Brown is a little too close to Mr. Shit.
Mr. Pink: Mr. Pink sounds like Mr. Pussy. How 'bout if I’m Mr. Purple? That sounds good to me. I’ll be Mr. Purple.
Joe: You’re not Mr. Purple. Some guy on some other job is Mr. Purple. Your Mr. PINK.
Mr. White: Who cares what your name is?
Mr. Pink: Yeah, that’s easy for your to say, you’re Mr. White. You have a cool-sounding name. Alright look, if it’s no big deal to be Mr. Pink, you wanna trade?
Joe: Hey! nobody’s trading with anybody. This ain’t a goddamn, fucking city council meeting!

Eddie: Let me say this out loud, ‘cause I wanna get it straight in my head. You’re saying that Mr. Blonde was gonna kill you, then when we got back, he was going kill us, take the satchel of diamonds, and scram. I’m right about that, right? That’s correct? That’s your story?
Mr. Orange: I swear on my mother’s eternal soul that’s what happened.
Eddie: The man you just killed was just released from prison. He got caught at a company warehouse full of hot items. He could’ve fuckin’ walked. All he had to do was say my dad’s name, but he didn’t; he kept his fucking mouth shut. And did his fuckin’ time, and he did it like a man. He did four years for us. So, Mr. Orange, you’re tellin’ me this very good friend of mine, who did four years for my father, who in four years never made a deal, no matter what they dangled in front of him, you’re telling me that now, that now this man is free, and we’re making good on our commitment to him, he’s just gonna decide, out of the fucking blue, to rip us off? Why don’t you tell me what really happened?
Joe: [walks in] What the hell for? It’d just be more bullshit.

Mr. White: How do you know all this?
Joe: He was the only one I wasn’t 100% on. I should have my fuckin’ head examined, going on a plan like this when I wasn’t 100%.
Mr. White: [shouting] That’s your fucking proof?!

[Joe pulls out his gun and aims it at Mr. Orange]
[In response, Mr. White pulls out his gun and aims it Joe]
[Eddie pulls out his gun and aims it at Mr. White]
Eddie: Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?
Mr. White: Joe, you’re making a terrible mistake. I’m not gonna let you make it.
Mr. Pink: Come on, guys! Nobody wants this! We’re supposed to be fucking professionals!
Eddie: Larry, look. It’s been quite a long time. A lot of jobs. There’s no need for this, man. Lets just put our guns down, and lets settle this with a fuckin’ conversation.
Mr. White: Joe, if you kill that man, you die next. I repeat: If you kill that man, you die next.
Eddie: Larry, we have been friends, and you respect my dad, and I respect you, but I will put fucking bullets right through your heart. You put that fuckin’ gun down, now.
Mr. White: Goddamn you, Joe. Don’t make me do this.
Eddie: [angrily] LARRY, STOP POINTING THAT FUCKIN’ GUN AT MY DAD!

Mr. White: Sorry, kid. Looks like we’re gonna do a little time.
Mr Orange: I’m a cop…I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.[/b]

How many thousands of people view their lives in this way? They are “stuck” or “trapped” in situations beyond their control. They want to burst loose but feel obligated to stay. Is it a moral commitment…an emotional tie that binds? Or maybe both? Meanwhile their lives are just passing them by.

The film does rings false in the end though [for me] because [conveniently] the biggest hurdle of them all…dies. When Gilbert tells Arnie, “we can go anywhere”, that’s only becasue now they can.

WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE
Directed by Lasse Hallström

[b]Gilbert [narrating]: Watching the campers is our yearly ritual. They’re doing the right thing…just passing through.

Gilbert [narrating]: Endora’s where we live. Describing Endora is like dancing to no music. It’s a town where nothing much ever happens…and nothing much ever will. Lamson’s Grocery is where I work. And miles out of town on the interstate, there’s Foodland…where everyone else shops.

Gilbert [narrating]: Doctors said we’d be lucky if Arnie lived to be ten. Well, ten came and went. Now the doctors are saying… “Any time now. Arnie can go at any time.” Some days you want him to live… some days you don’t.

Tucker: How’s momma?
Gilbert: She’s fat.
Tucker: Come on, man. She’s not all that big, Gilbert.
Gilbert: What?
Tucker: Listen, I saw a guy at the state fair who was… a little bit bigger.
Gilbert: A little bit bigger?
Tucker: Look, all I’m sayin’ is that she’s not the biggest I ever seen, okay?
Gilbert: Tucker, she’s a whale!
Tucker: Well, take her out for a walk once in a while.
Gilbert: Take her out for a jog!
Arnie: She’s a whale! Tucker, she’s a whale!

Becky: I love the sky. It’s so limitless.
Gilbert: It is big. It’s very big.
Becky: Big doesn’t even sum it up, right? The word big is too small.

Gilbert: It’s not going to happen again. This is the last time. Right Arnie?
Arnie: It’s the last time.
Gilbert: Okay. Let’s go.
Arnie: But I want to go back up there again.

Arnie: I could go at any time.

Gilbert: You don’t hurt Arnie, you just don’t.

Arnie: Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead!

Gilbert: We don’t really move. I mean, we’d like to, but…my mom is sort of attached to the house. Attached is, I guess, not the right word. She’s pretty much wedged in.

Mr. Lamson: What’s going on over there at “Food Land”?
Gilbert: [labeling price tags on cans] I wouldn’t know, I don’t shop there. [puts a can up and looks at boss] I’d rather die.

Gilbert: Did you ever see a beached whale on television?
Becky: Yeah.
Gilbert: Yeah. That’s her. That’s my mom.
Becky: What about your dad?
Gilbert: Uh, some other day. Some other day.

Betty: Hey. I could have had any guy, any guy, but I chose you. I chose you.
Gilbert: Why did you?
Betty: Because…I knew you’d always be there. Because I knew you’d never leave

Gilbert: Nobody knew what he felt. He didn’t give anything. He was just sort of there. You’d try to play with him, you know, get him to play around… or get him to laugh or get him to smile or get him to… I don’t know… get mad. But nothin’. Just like, uh, he was already dead.

Gilbert: l-It’s gonna take a crane to get her out.
Ellen: There’s gonna be a crowd. I just know there’s gonna be a crowd.

Amy: She’s so beautiful
Gilbert: I’m not going to let it be a joke.[/b]

The stuff in this movie really happened. Yeah, they cheated. On the other hand…

Cheating ought to be a synonym for capitalism in the dictionary. And the film more or less touts this as its subtext. Cheating in a world where the odds are stacked against millions just for being born on the wrong side of the tracks is not necessarily wrong in my view. Here the moral narrative is likely to revolve around dasein. In some contexts I believe it is reasonable to rationalize it.

And it is telling that in order to prove the kids cheated those investigating them resorted to cheating themselves: they lied to them. To each of them they claimed all the others had “confessed” and named him/her as the “ringleader”.

CHEATERS
Written and directed by John Stockwell

[b]Jerry: What did Dante say was written on the gates of Lucifer’s “shop”.
Jolie: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Student: That’s what it should say on the door to this school.

Irwin Flickas: It was a multiple choice test. Nobody told me you could only pick one answer!

Jerry: Benjamin Franklin said: “The only way 3 people can keep a secret is if 2 of them are dead”. Let’s see if we can prove him wrong.[/b]

They didn’t

[b]Jolie: This isn’t about cheating, it’s about winning. And as we all know winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing

Jolie: If you’re going to cheat, cheat smart.

Jerry: You wanna know why you should do this?
Paul: Course we’re gonna embarrass ourselves in front of the entire city?
Jerry: Because no one thinks you can. Because you don’t think you can.
Paul: Sir, we know we can’t.

Jolie: Dr. Plecki is amazing. He’s a really good teacher.
Darius: Well, what’s he doing here then?

Darius: Well, if we could get the tests, I’m sure Whitney Young has them too.
Jolie: Of course they do. Doesn’t the decathlon have their offices at Whitney Young? I mean, you do the math.
Dominik: So, two wrongs would make a right?
Darius: No. Two wrongs make it even.

Jerry: Why don’t you investigate, you know, Young’s scores from the past nine years? You won’t, because you’re in bed with them.
Joan: Are you questioning my integrity?
Jerry: I don’t need to question your integrity. I call your office, the phone rings at Whitney Young

Jolie: Why did Adam and Eve get in trouble in the first place?
Student: They ate the apple, baby.
Jolie: They ate from the tree of knowledge. They just wanted knowledge.
Jerry: God was testing them.
Jolie: But He didn’t tell them why. He was just, “I’m in charge here. Do what I say.” He said, “you can eat from any tree, just don’t eat from this one.” So, of course, what are they going to do? It’s human nature.

Jerry: Guys, this is crunch time. Nothing is supposed to get in the way of your studying. If you have to stay here all night, then…
Darius: Wait a second, Dr. Plecki, I don’t know what world you’re living in…I appreciate your optimism but the fact of this is no matter how hard we study and work for this Young is going to take this thing for the tenth year in a row. So if Dominik wants to keep his job and Agnieska wants to make sure her sister gets fed tonight instead of studying cytoplasmic binding proteins all day, that’s just…[long pause] Look, I love the dream you gave us. No, I really do. But there’s a certain point where you just have to wake up and realize, you know, it’s just a fuckin’ dream. It’s just a dream.

Jerry: Why don’t you go upstairs and tell those kids if they want to be in a basketball tournament, we’ll throw money at ‘em, but if they wanna be in an academic tournament, they are on their own.

Basketball coach: Jerry, what’s your record?
Jerry: My record?
Basketball coach: Yeah. You 0 and 4, 0 and 6? We’re 11 and 0.
Jerry: Congratu-fucking-lations.
Basketball coach: Yeah, well that’s why I get to use the machine.

Jerry: I’m a teacher so I’m supposed to spout the same platitudes you’ve heard a million times before: “Cheaters don’t prosper.” “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” Well, this may not be approved curriculum, but guess what. Winning does matter. Cheaters do prosper. I used to run a business importing Irish crystal and let me tell you what happens when you don’t pay off the right people or inflate sales claims or be creative with your accounting. You don’t stay in business very long. Try telling the truth on your loan application, you won’t get one. This is a results oriented world. Do you think Bill Gates fired the guys who brought him the Apple operating system code? He probably promoted them. Do you think he would ever send his kids to a Chicago public school?..They call Witney Young a public school. Uses public money. But what it is is a private school. These kids get the best education our tax dollars can buy. You get to go to school here if your parents know how to work the system. Maybe they don’t even live in the city limits so they keep a mail drop in Bucktown or they lie about their address…their income…their ethnicity.

Mother: How could you do this? How could you betray those kids?
Jerry: It’s not that simple, Mother.
Mother: Yes, it is. It’s that simple. Teachers don’t teach kids how to cheat.
Jerry: Believe me, those kids didn’t need any instruction.
Mother: Yes! Yes they did. They needed someone to tell them that it was wrong…Your father was so proud when you became a teacher. He never cared how much money you made…He lived a decent honest life.
Jerry: Yeah, and look what happened to him. He got screwed. He had this bullshit immigrant notion that if he worked hard enough and wanted something bad enough, all his dreams would come true!
Mother: No! All your dreams would come true. That’s why he worked so hard in that factory…inhaling those diesel fumes so you wouldn’t have to.
Jerry: The minute he got sick, they laid him off! They took his pension, they took his medical insurance! They killed him! They fucking killed him! That was his reward! That was the reward he got for all his hard work!

Jerry: Obviously, we made some mistakes.
Jolie: Getting caught for one.
Jerry: No, no, no. This isn’t about getting caught or being punished. I look at what we did as a kind of civil disobedience. Or maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I owe you an apology. I don’t know anything anymore. I just know that sometimes you need to break the rules in order to change them. And things will change because of this.
Paul: They’ll make the tests harder to steal.
Jerry: Yeah, probably…But they’ll also have to justify holding a competition that isn’t a real competition where the same yeam wins year after year. They’ll have to justify warehousing you while a chosen few get a quality education.[/b]

Of course those in power have always been particularly adept at rationalizing what they do not do for the poor and the working class.

Jolie [narrating]: People always ask me, “Having gone through everything you went through would you do it again?” And I always give the same answer. “In a heartbeat.” I learned more about the way the world really works from my nine months on the decathlon than most people will learn in a lifetime.

There are people able to cram very strange things into their heads. Watch out for them. If nothing else they might succeed in exposing all the strange shit you have crammed into your own.

Based [loosely, I suspect] on actual events.

THE NIGHT LISTENER
Directed by Patrick Stettner

[b]Gabe: What?
Jess: I think it’s the same voice.
Gabe: What?
Jess: Yeah. Pete and Donna. I…I don’t know. They have the same voice. One is just higher pitched, but they’re…
Gabe: What are you saying it’s some kind of impersonation?
Jess: Yeah, more or less.
Gabe: Why would someone do that?
Jess: I don’t know.
Gabe: Look, there are dozens of people who know them.
Jess: Who?
Gabe: Doctors. There’s a nurse who comes and stays at the house.
Jess: You’ve only been told that.
Gabe: What about Ashe?
Jess: Did he actually go to Wisconsin?
Gabe: He must have. What about the photo?
Jess: That could have be anybody.
Gabe: There are ways to prove this.
Jess: Hey, I’m happy to be wrong.

Gabe: Did she ever show you a birth certificate, an adoption document, something substanitial?
Ashe: If you think it’s a hoax, you’re off base.
Gabe: Why?
Ashe: Because!..Because I spent over a year speaking with them and they told me things you couldn’t imagine.

Gabe: Why would someone do this? That’s what I keep asking. It’s a hideous way to promote a book.
Anna: Maybe it’s not about that for her. Maybe she doesn’t even know she is doing it. Like a multiple-personality thing…Wait, what if she had a kid who died in some, like, horrible way and now she needs to assume his identity in order to…
Gabe: No…
Anna: What if she has him embalmed? You know, like that guy from Psycho?..No, wait. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What if she’s the one who doesn’t exist? What if he is impersonating her?

Gabe: What if there is some half-dead kid and I’ve just taken away his last shred of hope? I couldn’t live with that.
Anna: Ever thought of a voiceprint? Like what the cops use. They’re as good as fingerprints.
Gabe: Now you’re scaring me.

Donna: You know, I thought you’d be different. I thought you’d be able to look into his soul with his complexities and contradictions and see him as your own flesh and blood the way I do.
Gabe: That is how I see him.
Donna: I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have distrusted us.
Gabe: I spent the last two days stumbling around this fucked-up place so that I can say…
Donna: Just so you could say what? That you were sorry for thinking him a fraud? Give me a fuckin’ break.

Gabe: They know everything. They’re calling all the hospitals. They don’t like being lied to.
Donna [gasping]: I’m not lying!
Gabe [more to himself]: Jesus, why did I come here?!
Donna: You know why? Because you thought this would make a great fucking story. You’ll talk about me an Pete on the radio. That’s what this has always been about. All you care about is your audience loving you…For years Jess was dying and you picked over him like a vulture. You’re so pathetic, you actually think he is going to come back to you!

Donna [to Gabe over the phone]: Your story doesn’t have an ending, Gabriel. I’m at the Hudson Plaza Motel at JFK. Room 142. I left something for you.[/b]

If I could be one again, I would.

DRUGSTORE COWBOY
Written and directed by Gus Van Sant

[b]Bob: Upon entering my vein the drug would start a warm edge…Until the brain consumed it…I felt such pleasure that the whole world sympathized…It was grand then…Your worst enemy wasn’t so bad…The ants in the grass were just doing their thing…Everything took on a rosy hue of unlimited success…You could do no wrong…And as long as it lasted life was beautiful.

Rick: Jesus, Bob, you never told us anything about not mentioning dogs.
Bob: The reason nobody mentioned dogs, Rick, is that to mention the dog would have been a hex in itself.
Rick: All right, well, now we are on the subject, are there an other stupid things we aren’t supposed to mention that will affect our future?

Bob: We played a game you couldn’t win… to the utmost.

Bob: Diane was my wife. I loved her, and she loved dope. So we made a good couple.

Bob: I tell ya, no construction stiff working overtime endured more stress and strain than we did just trying to stay high.

Bob: All these kids, they’re all TV babies. Watching people killing and fucking each other on the boob tube for so long it’s all they know. Hell, they think it’s legal. They think it’s the right thing to do

Bob: A sheriff’s convention no less! Why couldn’t it have been a Tupperware convention?
Diane: Better yet an undertakers.

Bob: Well, to begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody, can talk a junkie out of using. You can talk to 'em for years but sooner or later they’re gonna get ahold of something. Maybe it’s not dope. Maybe it’s booze, maybe it’s glue, maybe it’s gasoline. Maybe it’s a gunshot to the head. But something. Something to relieve the pressures of their everyday life, like having to tie their shoes.

Drug Counselor: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
Bob: Yeah, a few times.
Drug Counselor: What were they? What felonies were you convicted of?
Bob: [pauses] What do you want? You want my life story?
[Gets up]
Bob: I’m a junkie, I like drugs, I like the whole lifestyle. But it just didn’t pay off. You know, you don’t see my kind of people. Because my kind of people don’t beg dope, they go out and get it.

Bob: [about Tom] I bet he shot a million dollars in his arm.

Tom the Priest: Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that someone can use drugs to escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots.

Gentry: Bob, tell me, who shot you
Bob: The hat.
Gentry: The hat?
Bob: Tell Diane to look out for the hat. Tell her, okay?
Gentry: Okay. It was the hat who shot you, right Bob?
Bob: No. The TV baby shot me.
Gentry: The TV baby shot you but the hat was with him, right? Tell me who the hat is Bob, so I can tell Diane.
Bob: Never mind, I’ll tell her myself.

Bob: It’s this fucking life. You never know what’s gonna happen next. That’s why Nadine spiked herself. It was the easy way out. That’s why Diane keeps going on the way she does. Most people don’t know how they’re gonna feel from one moment to the next. But a dope fiend has a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles.[/b]

Young, hip, middle-class singles in grungy Seattle. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, and they’re all white and beautiful.

SINGLES
Written and Directed by Cameron Crowe

[b]Salesman: This is the Genie Classic. You can’t go wrong with this garage door opener. Here’s the Liftrex series. We have the Liftrex and the Liftrex Super. Might be more opener than you need. And of course the Linear pocket-pager-beeper-garage-door-opener combo.
Linda: Just give me the best one you have. I’ll never lose it again.

Janet: Are my breasts too small for you?
Cliff: Sometimes.

Janet: Somewhere around 25, bizarre becomes immature.

Steve: I just happened to be nowhere near your neighborhood.

Debbie: Hey, guys, I’m gonna use that video date you got me last Christmas.
Bailey: It was a joke.

Andy: You know, it’s okay to loathe these people.

Young Steve: The man keeps moving until something squirts out of his penis.
Friend: What? What squirts out?
Young Steve: Spam!

Cliff: Look, Janet you know I see other people still. You do know that don’t you?
Janet: You don’t fool me.
Cliff: Janet, I could not be fooling you less

Steve: My friend and I have a long-running argument. He says that when you come to a place like this you can’t just be yourself you have to have an act. So, anyway, I saw you standing there so I thought: a] I could just leave you alone b] that I could come up with an act or c] I could just be myself. I chose c. What do you think?
Linda: I think that, a) you have an act, and that, b) not having an act is your act.

Janet: So I’m not an Amazon woman?
Steve: You’re from the high plains, Janet.

Cliff: That’s a very nice hat you’re wearing…and I don’t mean that in an Eddie Haskell kind of way.

Club Interviewer: Talking here with Cliff Poncier. Cliff, any comments on the “Seattle Sound” and Citizen Dick’s place in it?
Cliff: Well, I don’t like to reduce us to just being part of the “Seattle Sound.” I’d like to think of us as expanding more. Like, we’re huge in Europe right now. I mean, we’ve got records… uh, a big record just broke in Belgium.
Club Interviewer: Now, a song like “Touch Me, I’m Dick” is about…what?
Cliff: Well, I think “Touch Me, I’m Dick,” in essence, speaks for itself, you know. I think that, you know, that’s basically what the song is, um…about…is about, you know… I-I think a lot of people might think it’s actually about, you know,“My name is Dick, and, you know, you can touch me,” but, I think, you know, it can be seen either way.

The Mime: Let me tell you about love. Love disappears, baby!

Steve: I broke up with someone recently: Jennifer, my last girlfriend. I did it in a crowded restaurant. She just stared at me with that look: How can you pass me up? I told her we weren’t right and all the stuff we both knew. A week later I realized I was wrong, tried to get back together with her. She won’t see me. Now she’s with Tony. Tony knows my friend Bailey, who’s friends with the girl Tony’s going out with on the side, Rita. Rita who I broke up with to go out with Jennifer. So now do I tell Jennifer that I know Tony’s going out with Rita or do I tell Rita that I know about Tony and Jennifer? Tony will tell Jennifer that I was still going out with Rita while I was going out with her. How does stuff get so complicated? I don’t know.

Woman at clinic: Have you had breast implants before?
Janet: What do you think?
Woman at clinic [glancing down at her chest]: Uh, no.

Debbie: This is so unfair.
Pam: Okay, how much do you want for him?
Debbie: $200.
Pam: Outrageous!
Debbie: That’s what I paid.
Pam: $75.
Debbie: $150.
Pam: $80 and I’ll do the dishes all month.
Debbie: Deal!

Cliff: Tomorrow I got to sneak back in there and spell her name in rose petals.

Steve: Do you realize Janet that in modern day society there is almost no need to leave the house. At all.

Steve: What took you so long?[/b]