Modern love.
Or, rather, post-modern love.
You meet someone, get married and plan to live happily ever after. And yet in the back of your mind you know that, increasingly, this is less and less likely to actually happen. And it’s not all that uncommon these days to wreck the relationships – the lives – of those you now swear “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
Stranger still, how often do you come to realize that the love you had for spouse #1 was actually more genuine and worth sustaining?
I mean, has that ever happened to you?
It’s always basically the same thing: What you profess to feel now for this new person is what you once professed to feel for the one you want to be rid of.
Only this is sort of the exception to the rule.
In any event, modern love does not take kindly to plans. The law of unintended consequences and all that. Maggie’s plan? To come up with a baby, raise it as a single parent and live happily ever after. Then she bumps into John.
The folks here are straight out of Woody Allen. Liberal and liberated, they are comfortably off and know their away around all things intellectual and artistic. The rest of the world is just sort of “out there” somewhere as they go about the business of being the center of the universe. And, for the kids, this can become really fucked up. In other words, who has time for them?
Also, this is about folks [academics in particular] who get so caught up in their “work”, it soon takes precedence over everything else. And over everyone else. So a “happy ending” here is when they figure that out.
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie%27s_Plan
trailer: youtu.be/9al2JBycNHA
MAGGIE’S PLAN [2015]
Written in part and directed by Rebecca Miller
[b]Tony: Hi, how are you?
Maggie: I need a baby!
…
Tony [to Maggie]: Well, just so you know, I have some sperm in a facility uptown, if you’re in a pinch.
…
Tony: Guy Childers from college? Wait, wasn’t he the guy, he now…what, he’s a pickle salesman, right?
Maggie: No, he’s a pickle entrepreneur. And he agreed to make a donation, so that I could inseminate myself.
Tony: But he has no sense of personal space.
Maggie: So what? He was a math major. And I’m not gonna marry him. I’m just borrowing his genes.
Tony: But not his personality, I hope.
…
Maggie [to Guy]: I already have health insurance and everything. So I guess the question is, um, how much involvement do you want to have? I was going to suggest none, but, um, I’m open to negotiation.
…
Maggie: So, what do you teach?
John: Uh, Ficto-Critical Perspectives in Family Dynamics. Yeah, and Masks in the Modern Family, Victorian Times to the Present Day.
Maggie: Psychology department?
John: Anthropology. What about you?
Maggie: I’m the Director of Business Development and Outreach for the art and design students. Oh. Uh, what is that? I help graduate students strategize for success in the art and design world. I’m sort of a bridge between art and commerce.
John: You seem a little young for that, no?
Maggie: I have an MBA and a master’s in arts management.[/b]
See, straight out of Woody Allen.
[b]Printed on Felicia’s t-shirt: WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?
…
John [to Maggie]: I knew this Maasai from Tanzania. He was here to run in a marathon. He took everything about New York City in complete stride. Nothing fazed him until he saw a grown man following his dog and picking up his shit. He started laughing so hard, he wept.
…
Maggie: What is ficto-critical anthropology, anyway?
John: Well, it is a way of writing about anthropology that blends ethnographic observation, storytelling, and, like, theory.
…
Georgette: So, John, of course, we’ve been discussing the Occupy Wall Street movement…I can’t help mentioning the irony that Warner Bros. owns the copyright on the V for Vendetta mask that became the face of the Occupy movement…
John: Whether we like it or not, in this country, the most potent, totemic symbols that we have are cinematic and television-based. So it only makes sense that a radical popular movement would try to subvert them…
Georgette: Nevertheless, the reality of Occupy occurs within the capitalist narrative as a kind of subplot…
Kliegler: This sweeping cynicism of yours…
Georgette: If by “sweeping cynicism,” you mean not living in a dream, then shoot me now.
[audience laughs]
John: Nobody ever thinks a revolution is going to happen until three days after it’s happened. This is a leaderless movement. It wasn’t gonna operate on a schedule. This was a genuine populist uprising.
Georgette: Absolutely. But to return to the use of masks in politics. I am more interested in the possibility of anonymity and group affiliation. The “I am Spartacus” maneuver, which has been the primary tactical explanation for the use of masks among various 20th and 21 st century protest movements. Including the Zapatistas, the black blocs of the anti-globalization movement, and, of course, Pussy Riot.
…
Maggie: I like everything I’ve read. He’s asking me for suggestions.
Tony: What does his wife think about that?
Maggie: She doesn’t know about it. To be honest, I don’t think she really pays attention to what he does. She’s very self-absorbed. She might even be a narcissist…He’s basically a psychiatric nurse. He can’t write his novel under those conditions. I think their marriage, like, fell apart after the second child. And now he’s trapped in it.
Tony: Oh, that’s what he’s telling you.
Maggie: Why would he lie?
Tony: To get into your pants!
…
Guy [to Maggie]: I’ll be back in a jiff with that jizz.
…
Maggie: Why didn’t you become a mathematician?
Guy: I liked math because it was beautiful, that’s all. I never wanted to be a mathematician.
Maggie: Really? You think math is beautiful?
Guy: Anyone who’s touched even a hem of that garment knows it’s beautiful. For me, the hem was enough. Couldn’t have taken the frustration.
Maggie: What do you mean?
Guy: Never seeing the whole thing. You’re always just getting these little glimpses of the whole picture. Spending my whole life hunting for scraps of truth.
…
Electronic voice: “You have a 71% chance of being fertile”.
…
John: I’m in love with you. I mean, I’m genuinely locked out of my apartment. I am. But I’m also in love with you. And I don’t want to be married to Georgette anymore. And please…please can I…can I sleep in your bed? I don’t want you to have a baby with the pickle man. I want you to have a baby with me.
…
Maggie [of a character in John’s novel]: I’m Mrs. Jeffries, aren’t I? I’m the colorless, efficient postal worker that you fall in love with because she makes your life so much easier.
John: I came up with Mrs. Jeffries before we even met.
Maggie: Yeah, well, you’ve turned me into her, then. At least I don’t have a mustache. Yet.
…
Maggie [of John]: I’m terrified that I’m falling out of love with him. Like, really out of love.
Tony: Felicia and I fall in and out of love pretty much every week. You can’t be so idealistic
…
Georgette [at a book reading]: This book was born from pain. My husband, whom I am not ashamed to say I loved with all my heart, though we had a difficult relationship, had an affair with a younger woman, left me and started a new family. And what I gleaned from this exquisite torture are the thoughts which this act of betrayal to me as a woman provoked in me as an anthropologist. I must ask myself, is the contemporary obsession with exclusive possession ruining our chances of marital happiness?
…
Maggie: Georgette is fascinating.
Felicia: Really?
Maggie: Yes. She’s warm and powerful and charming all at once and I can see why he was so obsessed with her.
Felicia: I don’t think “easy to live with” was on that list, though, you know.
Maggie: I like her. I actually like her! I’m such a blockhead. I thought I was rescuing John from this monstrous egomaniac, so he could finally finish his book. I thought I knew better how to run his life, that I was gonna fix everything. And he’s totally self-absorbed,
while I do every single practical thing and make the money, and on top of that…If it weren’t for Lily, I would say I made a terrible mistake.
Felicia: It’s too bad you can’t give him back to his ex-wife. Right? [/b]
In other words, Maggie now has a new plan.
[b]Maggie: John and I are in trouble. And I don’t think he realizes how much trouble we’re in, or he doesn’t want to know. And then, when I saw you at the reading, I realized that there might be an opportunity, an opening to somehow get the two of you back together.
Georgette: Oh, I see. I see. So you are tired of your little affair? You’re all done with it. Now you want to make sure you don’t feel guilty so you’re going to manipulate us all into some absurd happy ending. I have met a lot of control freaks in my life, in fact, I thought I was one, but you, you make me look like an amateur.
Maggie: I didn’t mean to insult you.
Georgette: Have the decency to leave him and face the fact that you poisoned my life and my children’s life, and probably John’s life with your own selfishness. That’s your burden. You earned it.
Maggie: Uh, wait a minute. If you had such a perfect marriage, why was John miserable? You neglected him and you used him and you didn’t believe in his talent.
Georgette: If I am so awful, why are you trying to get me back together with him?
Maggie: Because I think that, actually, even though I do think you are pretty self-absorbed and extremely needy, that he needs it. It keeps him in balance. It’s thinking about you that stops him from only thinking about himself.
Georgette: Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave my house, leave.
…
Tony: Love is messy. It’s illogical, it’s wasteful and it’s messy. And it leaves these loose threads that go out all over the place. But you, you like things nice and neat and tidy and ethical. But you screwed that up the minute you got with a married man.
Maggie: You’re not being my friend right now.
Tony: Oh, yes, I am. I am being your friend. This is being your friend. I’m being honest with you. Good intentions. You’re all about good intentions. Little Miss Quaker Two Shoes is gonna do the right thing. But you always somehow screw it up.
Maggie: Screw you.
Tony: Yeah, screw me. Fine. Just being honest. Trying to be a friend.
…
Tony: I mean, what about Lily, huh? Fathers are a good thing, too.
Maggie: I know that. I know that, but I’m just as afraid of her growing up inside of a dead marriage as her growing up in a house without her dad. Kids can tell when people are pretending.
…
Maggie: Do you even like me anymore?
John [snorting]: What are you trying to get me to say, huh? It sounds like I should be asking you that question.
…
Georgette: I am attending a conference in Canada on ficto-critical anthropology. Ficto-critical anthropology is John’s field.
Maggie: I know.
Georgette: I’m in.
Maggie: Really?
Georgette: I have no reason to trust you. On the other hand, I have absolutely nothing to lose. I could easily arrange to have John give a paper at the conference.
Maggie: Do you think he would accept?
Georgette: Slavoj Žižek is speaking. He loves Žižek.
…
Georgette: I’m sorry.
John: For what?
Georgette: For being so self-centered. For not listening to you, to what you needed, for not investing in your work.
John: You don’t have to say that.
Georgette: I think I became so caught up in succeeding, in making a name for myself. I stopped paying attention to you, to us, to our marriage. And now I have success, it’s as if I’ve emerged from a tunnel. And I hope in the future, to be less self-absorbed. If I ever get another chance at love.
John: What are you saying? Of course you’ll get another chance.
Georgette: You think so?
John: Yeah. Come on! I’m sure they’re lining up.
…
Felicia: Well… John and Maggie…He and Georgette…
Tony: What? Like, it worked?
Joihn: What worked?[/b]
Uh, oh…
[b]John: Was it a test, huh? Is that it? To see if I was still in love with Georgette as you secretly suspected? You must be very happy now.
Maggie: I felt we were going to break up. And I had a feeling that you were still in love with Georgette. And it turns out you were.
…
Justine [daughter]: Can you please just tell me what’s going on?
Maggie: Your dad and I got into a big fight and he’s taking some time.
Justine [to Georgette]: Are you and him getting back together?
Georgette: It’s a complex situation. Are you sad?
Justine: No.
Georgette: Angry?
Justine: You guys have no idea what you’re doing, do you? I mean, there’s no plan. Is there?[/b]
On the contrary, plans are all there are.
[b]Maggie: Is something burning?
…
Maggie: I just think if you guys saw each other again…
Georgette: No, no. No more matchmaking ideas. No more ideas, period. You’ve had your thinking license revoked.
…
John: You wanted to see me?
Georgette: [handing him a bag of ashes]: Yes. I wanted to return your book.
…
Georgette: The reason your book doesn’t work is you put too much weight in the allegory. You’re trying to use fiction to prove a thesis. The text is crying out for pure passages of economic theory. Narrative blended with theory is your specialty. Make it a John Harding book. It could be a phenomenon.
John: You really think so?
George: I know it, John. You just have to accept it’ll be published by Yale University Press, and not Scribner’s. Probably be shortlisted for a Bateson Prize. You might even win one.
John: Oh, fuck.
…
Maggie: I’ve decided to embrace the mystery of the universe and stop bossing everybody around so much.
Max [Tony’s son]: Good luck with that, bossy pants.
Tony: He’s gonna write a book about us one day and we are not gonna look good.
…
Lily: 3,000, 100, 15,000.
Maggie: What kind of 3-year-old loves numbers that much?
Tony: Was John into math? I know you weren’t.[/b]
Cue Guy.