This being smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression folks have to come up with all sorts of ways to make ends meet. And who is to say that thieving…robbing banks…is wrong when it seems to be the only way to get what you need to, say, subsist from day to day. And, okay, sure, all that other stuff too. Some are just more resourceful at it than others.
Of course you’re always looking over your shoulders for the law. Especially when you start in on blowing people away. That’s the trajectory here. You start out thinking you’re dealing with the gang that couldn’t shoot straight and before you know it there’s a body count. Suddenly they’re not so sympathetic anymore. In fact, they become increasingly more pathetic instead.
And then there’s the folks that get mixed up with them. Fall in love with them. Find themselves impregnated by them. Or betray them.
Look for Nurse Ratchet. And the Klingon Ambassador.
Of the ambush shoot-out sequence, co-scriptwriter Joan Tewkesbury said: “Bob [Altman] wanted more gunfire because of course we were living through all the assassinations. Bob wanted them to just kill, to kill the house with bullets. Overkill. Without asking any questions they just went in and shot the house until it fell down, literally. And then when Bowie was carried out, he was like another deer they shot while hunting”. IMDb
Thieves Like Us
Chicamaw: I can tell he sells marijuana just by how he drives.
I spotted that too.
T-dub [reading a newspaper account of their escape from prison]: “When asked why the three trustees were able to escape, the warden Everett Gaylord, replied, ‘well, if you can’t trust a trustee, who can you trust?’”
My guess: they took advantage of that.
Bowie: Miss Keechie, do you know what the Mississippi state animal is?
Keechie: What?
Bowie: You know, the state animal.
Keechie: I don’t know. A deer, maybe?
Bowie: No, sir! It’s a squashed dog in the road! You know what the state flower is?
Keechie: Did you shoot that man in Selpa?
[long pause]
Bowie: It was him or me. He’s come around the car after me with a gun…It’s a weed.
Weed works for me.
Bowie: I’ll give you the straight of it, Keechie. I ain’t sorry those two cops are dead. I ain’t sorry for anything I ever did in this world. The only regret I got is that I didn’t get 100,000 instead of 19. And that I never pitched pro ball.
Thieves like him.
Chickamaw: I’ll tell you one thing, Bowie. I don’t see how the hell you do it. I mean, you come back here, run these roads, pull a thing like that back yonder, and then you beat them laws left and right. I don’t see how you do it. You ain’t nothing but a big country boy, and you’re chumpy as hell at times, and yet, by God, you do it.
Bowie: Just luck.
Chickamaw.Yeah, just luck. Let’s call it that. Hell, you ain’t nothing but a country school chump…God, Bowie, you make me look like 30 cents. And what the hell do the papers do all the goddamn time? It’s all about you. It rips my guts out!
Thieves like him.
T-Dub: Yeah, I made my mistake when I was a kid. I shoulda been a doctor or a lawyer or run for office. I shoulda robbed people with my brain instead of a gun.
You know, if that's what they do.
Bowie: You know what the Mississippi state tree is?
Keechie: Oh, Bowie, I don’t know.
Bowie: It’s the telephone pole.
Right again!
Keechie: I think it’ll be a boy.
Lady in Train Station: Can you tell?
Keechie: Well I hope it is. But if it is, he sure will not be named after his dad, God rest his soul. He crossed me up once too often, lying. He didn’t deserve to have no baby named after him.
I guess we'll never know.
Quote of the day
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Yuval Noah Harari
Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.
Right, blame it on the fucking plants.
Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change.
Let's run this by the Communists here.
According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently’.
Yeah, well that probably explains some of us.
Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.
Uh, tell that to the Stooges?
Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.
I can live with that.
Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.
Any experts here?
Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.
Right, blame it on the fucking plants.
Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change.
Let's run this by the Communists here.
According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently’.
Yeah, well that probably explains some of us.
Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.
Uh, tell that to the Stooges?
Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.
I can live with that.
Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.
Any experts here?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
This is the sort of stuff that, back in 1969 when we first landed on the Moon, some figured we’d be doing about now. Or, at any rate, a hell of a lot farther along than we actually are. And I think it’s a safe bet that for most of us [okay, all of us] this is as close as we are ever likely to get to it. Why oh why does space, the final frontier, have to be so goddamn vast?
I mean, come on, how far into the future before our descendants hear something like this:
"Earth that was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new Earths."
Apparently, it helps here to have seen the sci-fi television series Firefly. And, in fact, I never even heard of it. But I have seen most of the original Star Trek episodes. And that’s important because it prepares you to view the world as either “civilized” or “savage”.
So, which ones are we? And don’t forget to include the means here along with the ends.
Here the characters don’t discuss things, they banter. They exchange repartee. They always say clever things and never take the danger all that seriously. Much less death. But one thing always stays the same: the military industrial complex. And here they weaponize human beings as never before. In other words, one way or another there is always going to be the incarnation of the Bilderberg Group.
Bottom line? That, in the long run, human aggression is a good thing. Don’t fuck with it. That and love.
How implausable is all this? Beam me up, Scotty. But I suspect more than just a small chunk of it is tongue in cheek. That’s true, right?
Serenity
Teacher: With so much social and medical advancements we can bring to the Independents why would they fight so hard against us?
Young River: We meddle. People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
Teacher: We’re not telling people how to think, we’re just trying to show them how.
Millions of Americans actually think this way regarding America's own foreign policy!
Dr. Mathias [referring to Dr. Simon Tam who has just helped his sister, River Tam, escape]: Gave up a brilliant future in medicine as well. It’s madness.
The Operative: Madness?
[walks over to the holographic projection of River and Simon escaping through an air vent]
The Operative: Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At his face? It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.
Unrequited love in particlar I suspect.
The Operative: Like this facility, I don’t exist.
I doubt that.
Dr. Mathias [referring to Dr. Simon Tam who has just helped his sister, River Tam, escape]: Gave up a brilliant future in medicine as well. It’s madness.
The Operative: Madness?
[walks over to the holographic projection of River and Simon escaping through an air vent]
The Operative: Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At his face? It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.
Love...and madness? You first.
Wash: This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define “interesting”.
Wash [deadpan]: Oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die!
Mal [on the ship’s intercom]: This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then…explode.
Cue the script?
Mal: Just get us on the ground!
Wash: That part’ll happen pretty definitely.
Gravity, let's call it.
Zoë: Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.
I did. It's true.
Next up: the definition of true.
Jayne: I’ve been to the edge…it just looked like more space.
Bummer.
The Operative: I want to resolve this like civilized men. I’m not threatening you. I’m unarmed.
Mal: Good.
[he pulls out a gun and shoots Operative in the chest, knocking him into the wall]
The Operative [grabbing Mal from behind]: I am, however, wearing full body armor. I am not a moron!
Black power?
Mal: Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Next up: the truth about Trump.
Shepherd [dying]: I killed the ship that killed us. Not very Christian.
Mal: You did what was right.
Shepherd: Coming from you that means - almost nothing.
Or, here, coming from me?
Mal: Ready to get off this heap, back to civilized life?
Inara: I, uh… I don’t know.
Mal: Good answer.
As with most things, right?
I mean, come on, how far into the future before our descendants hear something like this:
"Earth that was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new Earths."
Apparently, it helps here to have seen the sci-fi television series Firefly. And, in fact, I never even heard of it. But I have seen most of the original Star Trek episodes. And that’s important because it prepares you to view the world as either “civilized” or “savage”.
So, which ones are we? And don’t forget to include the means here along with the ends.
Here the characters don’t discuss things, they banter. They exchange repartee. They always say clever things and never take the danger all that seriously. Much less death. But one thing always stays the same: the military industrial complex. And here they weaponize human beings as never before. In other words, one way or another there is always going to be the incarnation of the Bilderberg Group.
Bottom line? That, in the long run, human aggression is a good thing. Don’t fuck with it. That and love.
How implausable is all this? Beam me up, Scotty. But I suspect more than just a small chunk of it is tongue in cheek. That’s true, right?
Serenity
Teacher: With so much social and medical advancements we can bring to the Independents why would they fight so hard against us?
Young River: We meddle. People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
Teacher: We’re not telling people how to think, we’re just trying to show them how.
Millions of Americans actually think this way regarding America's own foreign policy!
Dr. Mathias [referring to Dr. Simon Tam who has just helped his sister, River Tam, escape]: Gave up a brilliant future in medicine as well. It’s madness.
The Operative: Madness?
[walks over to the holographic projection of River and Simon escaping through an air vent]
The Operative: Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At his face? It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.
Unrequited love in particlar I suspect.
The Operative: Like this facility, I don’t exist.
I doubt that.
Dr. Mathias [referring to Dr. Simon Tam who has just helped his sister, River Tam, escape]: Gave up a brilliant future in medicine as well. It’s madness.
The Operative: Madness?
[walks over to the holographic projection of River and Simon escaping through an air vent]
The Operative: Have you looked at this scan carefully, Doctor? At his face? It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.
Love...and madness? You first.
Wash: This landing is gonna get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define “interesting”.
Wash [deadpan]: Oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die!
Mal [on the ship’s intercom]: This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then…explode.
Cue the script?
Mal: Just get us on the ground!
Wash: That part’ll happen pretty definitely.
Gravity, let's call it.
Zoë: Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.
I did. It's true.
Next up: the definition of true.
Jayne: I’ve been to the edge…it just looked like more space.
Bummer.
The Operative: I want to resolve this like civilized men. I’m not threatening you. I’m unarmed.
Mal: Good.
[he pulls out a gun and shoots Operative in the chest, knocking him into the wall]
The Operative [grabbing Mal from behind]: I am, however, wearing full body armor. I am not a moron!
Black power?
Mal: Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Next up: the truth about Trump.
Shepherd [dying]: I killed the ship that killed us. Not very Christian.
Mal: You did what was right.
Shepherd: Coming from you that means - almost nothing.
Or, here, coming from me?
Mal: Ready to get off this heap, back to civilized life?
Inara: I, uh… I don’t know.
Mal: Good answer.
As with most things, right?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Imagine if this stuff was real. It would be but one more layer to consider when discussing the nature of love. Or, for that matter, of morality.
Anyway, if you could erase someone from your memory – someone who provoked only the most painful of recollections – would you? And it’s not really as fanciful as you might imagine. For instance, on Through the Wormhole, Morgan Freeman focused on scenarios not all that far removed from this. We are increasingly heading toward a world in which our brains [our conscious states] can be “hacked” or manipulated by others; and in any number of bizarre ways. It’s, well, mindboggling stuff.
In the interim though we still have to deal with all the exasperating repercussions of “falling in love” in the world we live in now. And let’s face it…the only realistic way to deal with all the bad memories of the folks before is to create new ones with others now. I always just assumed there is no way an old relationship can compete with how you first feel when you meet someone new and fall in love. Or even in lust. It takes an exceptional relationship to top that. More love and human remains.
Expect to be confused. But don’t waste your time trying to untangle the different narratives. In fact the whole point of the film is to show how futile it can be to try to impose some sort of linear logic on love. And this is, after all, the world of Charlie Kaufman.
And I’m grateful for any film in which Jim Carrey isn’t acting like a maniac—and for almost the entire first hour.
The idea was brought to Michel Gondry by his friend the artist Pierre Bismuth who suggested, “You get a card in the mail that says: someone you know has just erased you from their memory…” IMDb
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel [voiceover as Clementine acknowledges him by raising her coffee mug]: Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?
Just out of curiosity, any men here who didn't?
Clementine: You’re not a stalker, or anything, right?
Joel: I’m not a stalker. You’re the one that talked to me, remember?
Clementine: That is the oldest trick in the stalker book.
Just out of curiosity, who wrote that?
Card from Lacuna Inc:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Eakin
Clementine Kruczynski has had Joel Barish erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to her again. Thank You.
Or how about this:
Card from the APA:
Dear Posters,
The objectivists here have had iambiguous erased from their memories. Please never mention him again. Thank You.
Joel: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Howard: Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it’s on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you’ll miss.
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
Clementine: Face it, Joely, you’re freaked out because I was out late without you, and in your little wormy brain you are trying to figure out, “Did she fuck someone tonight?”
Joel: No, see Clem, I assume you fucked someone tonight. Isn’t that how you get people to like you?
And how far below the belt is this?
Patrick: You know that girl we did last week? The one with the potatoes.
Stan: That girl? Yeah, that’s this guy’s girl!
Patrick: Yeah. Well uh, I kind of fell in love with her that night.
Stan: What? You little fuck!
Patrick: What?
Stan: She was unconscious, man.
Patrick: Well, she was beautiful and… I stole a pair of her panties as well.
Stan: Jesus!
Patrick: What? It’s not like - I mean they were clean and all.
Stan: Don’t tell me this stuff! I don’t wanna hear this shit!
Of course, some actually thrive on it.
Mary [to Stan]: “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders”. That’s Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Found it in my Bartlett’s.
Well, it's attributed to Nietzsche, anyway.
Here's AI's take on it:
"It essentially means that people who readily forget their mistakes are able to move on from them more easily and not let them negatively impact their lives, essentially "getting the better" of their blunder."
On the other hand, I suspect that depends on the blunder.
Joel [to Clementine]: Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.
Next up: constant posting.
Joel: Mierzwiak! Please let me keep this memory, just this one!
Which one would you keep?
Clementine: Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.
Joel: I remember that speech really well.
Clementine: I had you pegged, didn’t I?
Joel: You had the whole human race pegged.
Then that makes [at least] two of us,
Joel [listening to himself on the Lacuna tape]: I mean, she’s smart, I think, but not educated. I couldn’t really talk to her about books, you know? She’s more a magazine-reading girl. Her vocabulary leaves something to be desired. Sometimes I was embarrassed in public. She would pronounce library, “libary”.
Here? Let's name names.
Joel: I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.
Well, there you go. Take it or leave it.
Anyway, if you could erase someone from your memory – someone who provoked only the most painful of recollections – would you? And it’s not really as fanciful as you might imagine. For instance, on Through the Wormhole, Morgan Freeman focused on scenarios not all that far removed from this. We are increasingly heading toward a world in which our brains [our conscious states] can be “hacked” or manipulated by others; and in any number of bizarre ways. It’s, well, mindboggling stuff.
In the interim though we still have to deal with all the exasperating repercussions of “falling in love” in the world we live in now. And let’s face it…the only realistic way to deal with all the bad memories of the folks before is to create new ones with others now. I always just assumed there is no way an old relationship can compete with how you first feel when you meet someone new and fall in love. Or even in lust. It takes an exceptional relationship to top that. More love and human remains.
Expect to be confused. But don’t waste your time trying to untangle the different narratives. In fact the whole point of the film is to show how futile it can be to try to impose some sort of linear logic on love. And this is, after all, the world of Charlie Kaufman.
And I’m grateful for any film in which Jim Carrey isn’t acting like a maniac—and for almost the entire first hour.
The idea was brought to Michel Gondry by his friend the artist Pierre Bismuth who suggested, “You get a card in the mail that says: someone you know has just erased you from their memory…” IMDb
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel [voiceover as Clementine acknowledges him by raising her coffee mug]: Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?
Just out of curiosity, any men here who didn't?
Clementine: You’re not a stalker, or anything, right?
Joel: I’m not a stalker. You’re the one that talked to me, remember?
Clementine: That is the oldest trick in the stalker book.
Just out of curiosity, who wrote that?
Card from Lacuna Inc:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Eakin
Clementine Kruczynski has had Joel Barish erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to her again. Thank You.
Or how about this:
Card from the APA:
Dear Posters,
The objectivists here have had iambiguous erased from their memories. Please never mention him again. Thank You.
Joel: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Howard: Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it’s on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you’ll miss.
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
Clementine: Face it, Joely, you’re freaked out because I was out late without you, and in your little wormy brain you are trying to figure out, “Did she fuck someone tonight?”
Joel: No, see Clem, I assume you fucked someone tonight. Isn’t that how you get people to like you?
And how far below the belt is this?
Patrick: You know that girl we did last week? The one with the potatoes.
Stan: That girl? Yeah, that’s this guy’s girl!
Patrick: Yeah. Well uh, I kind of fell in love with her that night.
Stan: What? You little fuck!
Patrick: What?
Stan: She was unconscious, man.
Patrick: Well, she was beautiful and… I stole a pair of her panties as well.
Stan: Jesus!
Patrick: What? It’s not like - I mean they were clean and all.
Stan: Don’t tell me this stuff! I don’t wanna hear this shit!
Of course, some actually thrive on it.
Mary [to Stan]: “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders”. That’s Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Found it in my Bartlett’s.
Well, it's attributed to Nietzsche, anyway.
Here's AI's take on it:
"It essentially means that people who readily forget their mistakes are able to move on from them more easily and not let them negatively impact their lives, essentially "getting the better" of their blunder."
On the other hand, I suspect that depends on the blunder.
Joel [to Clementine]: Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.
Next up: constant posting.
Joel: Mierzwiak! Please let me keep this memory, just this one!
Which one would you keep?
Clementine: Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.
Joel: I remember that speech really well.
Clementine: I had you pegged, didn’t I?
Joel: You had the whole human race pegged.
Then that makes [at least] two of us,
Joel [listening to himself on the Lacuna tape]: I mean, she’s smart, I think, but not educated. I couldn’t really talk to her about books, you know? She’s more a magazine-reading girl. Her vocabulary leaves something to be desired. Sometimes I was embarrassed in public. She would pronounce library, “libary”.
Here? Let's name names.
Joel: I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.
Well, there you go. Take it or leave it.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
How good is this documentary? At RT it got a 100% fresh rating on 39 reviews.
If you start out knowing little or nothing about Fred A. Leuchter [like me] you think this is going to be a documentary about the death penality. That and the technology used to carry it out. But then you are wondering: where does the part about “the fall” of this guy come in? How does he go about that? And that’s when the film shifts gears. Not only across space but across time itself. We are taken back to death on a truly massive and monstrous scale. And once Leuchter stumbles into this it’s all she wrote. We shift from the technology of death to the ideology of genocide. And then to the denial of it.
Oddly enough what motivated Leuchter to get into the death business was his alleged humanitarian concern that executions were actually a form of state sanctioned torture. If capital punishment was to be the law of the land at least make it more “civilized”.
As for denying the Holocaust, many will surely be incensed that Leuchter and his ilk were even given the opportunity here to make their case at all. And I think it can even be argued that, when push comes to shove, Leuchter was given the last word. At the end, the arguments seemed to shift from examining the Holocaust to speculating on whether or not Leuchter might have been persecuted for the role he had played here.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Reuchter
Leuchter: I became involved in the manufacture of execution equipment because I was concerned with the deplorable condition of the hardware that’s in most of the states’ prisons, which generally results in torture prior to death.
And, no, not just in Texas.
Leuchter: The human body is not easy to destroy. It’s not easy to take a life humanely and painlessly, without doing a great deal of damage to the individual’s body. Excess current cooks the tissue. There have been occasions where a great amount of current has been applied and the meat will come off the executee’s body like meat coming off a cooked chicken.
That ever happen to you?
Leuchter: The first jolt disrupts or destroys the individual’s central nervous system. Current is then applied for a time approaching one minute. The adrenaline is being driven out into the bloodstream. The second jolt now seizes the pacemaker a second time. There’s now no adrenaline left to restart the pacemaker. The person is dead. If the voltage does not exceed 2,000 volts throughout the execution, the individual’s pacemaker is not permanently seized. In some minutes later the individual’s heart restarts itself on its own and the person is now alive again. They would have to call all the witnesses back, strap the vegetable back into the chair and reelectrocute him.
FYI?
Leuchter: Many of the electric chairs were built by inmates and electricians who had no idea of what they were building. They took a picture of another state’s electric chair and made something that looked like it.
Sounds like bullshit, but, after all, this is America.
Leuchter: With electrocution, unconsciousness takes place in 1/240 th part of a second. Gas chamber, within three or four minutes. And with the gallows it doesn’t matter, because you’re being dropped almost immediately after being brought onto the scaffold. None of the procedures require that somebody lay on a gurney for 35 minutes looking at a ceiling.
Or, sure, praying to God.
Leuchter: Another thing that we do is, our electric chair contains a drip pan. All executees, during the execution, lose control of their bodily functions. They urinate and defecate in their pants, on their chair. This normally winds up on the chair and on the floor directly beneath the chair. This is a disgusting thing when it occurs. It’s a very inhumane thing to allow a person who’s being executed, a human being… who should be afforded the greatest dignity of all because he is losing his life-- It’s a disgusting and a degrading thing to allow him to defecate… and, quite frankly, piss on the floor.
Shifting gears:
Leuchter: Because of my expertise in the construction of execution equipment, I was asked to testify by the defense team of Mr. Ernst Zündel, a German national living in Canada for some 20 odd years who published a pamphlet.: “Did Six Million Really Die?”
The fall begins...
Zundel: We can solve the mystery of the gas chambers…in Auschwitz and all these other places…if we find an American expert, because America is the only country that dispatches people with gas. You can’t open up the phone book and say “gas,” then “chamber,” then “experts,” and out come ten Fred Leuchters. No. There was nobody. Fred Leuchter was our only hope.
So, off to Auschwitz they go.
Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter’s a victim of the myth of Sherlock Holmes. A crime has been committed. You go to the site of the crime and with a magnifying glass you find a hair or a speck of dust on the shoe. Leuchter thinks that is the way reality can be reconstructed. But he is no Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have the training. It was not that he brought any experience, the specific experience needed to look at ruined buildings. The only experience he had was design modifications for the Missouri gas chambers in Jacksonville.
That does seem rather far removed from the death camps over there.
Leuchter: I expected to see facilities that could have been used as gas chambers. I expected to see areas that were explosion-proof. I expected to see areas that were leak-proof. There have to be holes in walls or areas where they had exhaust fans and pipes. There has to be something to remove the gas after it’s been put into the room. There has to be some kind of device to heat the chalk pellets and sublimate the gas to get it to go into the air. These things didn’t exist.
Unless, of course, they did.
Robert Jan van Pelt: Auschwitz today is very, very different from the place it was during the war. Everything has changed three or four times since that camp operated as an extermination camp…If Leuchter had gone to the archives, if he had spent time in the archives he would have found evidence about ventilation systems, evidence about ways to introduce Zyklon B into these buildings, evidence of gas chambers, undressing rooms. But then, of course, I don’t think he knows German, so it wouldn’t have helped very much.
Yeah, what about that?
Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter has said a number of times that the place wasn’t touched. Just open your eyes. You realize that this is utter nonsense. Virtually every brick, which was located in in one place, has been relocated to another place. Where are all the bricks of the crematoria? It’s an interesting question. There’s some mountain of bricks in Crematorium Five, but for the rest there are no bricks. I think I know where they are. The real places to sample are the farmhouses to the west of the crematoria, the farmhouses where people are living, children are playing, dogs are barking. These were rebuilt after the war with bricks of the crematoria. This site has been turned inside-out. What was inside the camp is now outside the camp.
Imagine finding out that you lived in a house built from those bricks. Though I suspect some here might be particularly pleased.
Shelly Shapiro: There is no slippery slope for Mr. Fred Leuchter. The man is an anti-Semite. There are hatemongers in this country, and he’s one of them. He handed over his entire life and reputation to the cause of spreading hatred. He didn’t stop. He kept on going. He could have gotten out at any time.
Does the gear shift again here? You decide:
David Irving: He’s been destroyed as a human being. He’s had his marriage destroyed. He’s had his life destroyed. I frankly am surprised he didn’t go and commit suicide, jump under a train. He saw everything he had built up in his own quiet, humble way destroyed by these people he had never met, whom he had offended. All he did was take the bucket and spade and go over to Auschwitz and come back with the samples. And that was an act of criminal simplicity. He had no idea of what he was blundering into. He wasn’t putting his name on the line because he had no name. He came from nowhere, and he went back to nowhere.
He's still around, in fact.
Leuchter: Of course I’m not an anti-Semite. I have a lot of friends that are Jewish. I’ve lost Jewish friends, too, because of what’s happened. I bear no ill will to any Jews anyplace, whether they’re in the United States or abroad. I bear a great deal of ill will to those people that have come after me, those people who have persecuted and prosecuted me. But that’s got nothing to do with them being Jewish. That only has to do with the fact that they’ve been interfering… with my right to live, think, breathe and earn a living. As far as being a revisionist-- At this point, I’m not an official revisionist, but I guess I’m a reluctant revisionist. If my belief that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek makes me a revisionist, then so be it. They’ve expressed their unquestioned intent of destroying me simply because I testified in Canada, not because I have any other affiliation with any anti-Semitic organization, not because I’m affiliated with any Nazi or neo-Nazi organization. I have no work. I haven’t sold a piece of equipment in almost three years. And I have no idea if this situation is gonna change.
He does get the last word. My own gut feeling is that more than anything he reveled in being treated like a hero among the Holocaust deniers. He loved it. From nobody to his very own15 minutes.
If you start out knowing little or nothing about Fred A. Leuchter [like me] you think this is going to be a documentary about the death penality. That and the technology used to carry it out. But then you are wondering: where does the part about “the fall” of this guy come in? How does he go about that? And that’s when the film shifts gears. Not only across space but across time itself. We are taken back to death on a truly massive and monstrous scale. And once Leuchter stumbles into this it’s all she wrote. We shift from the technology of death to the ideology of genocide. And then to the denial of it.
Oddly enough what motivated Leuchter to get into the death business was his alleged humanitarian concern that executions were actually a form of state sanctioned torture. If capital punishment was to be the law of the land at least make it more “civilized”.
As for denying the Holocaust, many will surely be incensed that Leuchter and his ilk were even given the opportunity here to make their case at all. And I think it can even be argued that, when push comes to shove, Leuchter was given the last word. At the end, the arguments seemed to shift from examining the Holocaust to speculating on whether or not Leuchter might have been persecuted for the role he had played here.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Reuchter
Leuchter: I became involved in the manufacture of execution equipment because I was concerned with the deplorable condition of the hardware that’s in most of the states’ prisons, which generally results in torture prior to death.
And, no, not just in Texas.
Leuchter: The human body is not easy to destroy. It’s not easy to take a life humanely and painlessly, without doing a great deal of damage to the individual’s body. Excess current cooks the tissue. There have been occasions where a great amount of current has been applied and the meat will come off the executee’s body like meat coming off a cooked chicken.
That ever happen to you?
Leuchter: The first jolt disrupts or destroys the individual’s central nervous system. Current is then applied for a time approaching one minute. The adrenaline is being driven out into the bloodstream. The second jolt now seizes the pacemaker a second time. There’s now no adrenaline left to restart the pacemaker. The person is dead. If the voltage does not exceed 2,000 volts throughout the execution, the individual’s pacemaker is not permanently seized. In some minutes later the individual’s heart restarts itself on its own and the person is now alive again. They would have to call all the witnesses back, strap the vegetable back into the chair and reelectrocute him.
FYI?
Leuchter: Many of the electric chairs were built by inmates and electricians who had no idea of what they were building. They took a picture of another state’s electric chair and made something that looked like it.
Sounds like bullshit, but, after all, this is America.
Leuchter: With electrocution, unconsciousness takes place in 1/240 th part of a second. Gas chamber, within three or four minutes. And with the gallows it doesn’t matter, because you’re being dropped almost immediately after being brought onto the scaffold. None of the procedures require that somebody lay on a gurney for 35 minutes looking at a ceiling.
Or, sure, praying to God.
Leuchter: Another thing that we do is, our electric chair contains a drip pan. All executees, during the execution, lose control of their bodily functions. They urinate and defecate in their pants, on their chair. This normally winds up on the chair and on the floor directly beneath the chair. This is a disgusting thing when it occurs. It’s a very inhumane thing to allow a person who’s being executed, a human being… who should be afforded the greatest dignity of all because he is losing his life-- It’s a disgusting and a degrading thing to allow him to defecate… and, quite frankly, piss on the floor.
Shifting gears:
Leuchter: Because of my expertise in the construction of execution equipment, I was asked to testify by the defense team of Mr. Ernst Zündel, a German national living in Canada for some 20 odd years who published a pamphlet.: “Did Six Million Really Die?”
The fall begins...
Zundel: We can solve the mystery of the gas chambers…in Auschwitz and all these other places…if we find an American expert, because America is the only country that dispatches people with gas. You can’t open up the phone book and say “gas,” then “chamber,” then “experts,” and out come ten Fred Leuchters. No. There was nobody. Fred Leuchter was our only hope.
So, off to Auschwitz they go.
Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter’s a victim of the myth of Sherlock Holmes. A crime has been committed. You go to the site of the crime and with a magnifying glass you find a hair or a speck of dust on the shoe. Leuchter thinks that is the way reality can be reconstructed. But he is no Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have the training. It was not that he brought any experience, the specific experience needed to look at ruined buildings. The only experience he had was design modifications for the Missouri gas chambers in Jacksonville.
That does seem rather far removed from the death camps over there.
Leuchter: I expected to see facilities that could have been used as gas chambers. I expected to see areas that were explosion-proof. I expected to see areas that were leak-proof. There have to be holes in walls or areas where they had exhaust fans and pipes. There has to be something to remove the gas after it’s been put into the room. There has to be some kind of device to heat the chalk pellets and sublimate the gas to get it to go into the air. These things didn’t exist.
Unless, of course, they did.
Robert Jan van Pelt: Auschwitz today is very, very different from the place it was during the war. Everything has changed three or four times since that camp operated as an extermination camp…If Leuchter had gone to the archives, if he had spent time in the archives he would have found evidence about ventilation systems, evidence about ways to introduce Zyklon B into these buildings, evidence of gas chambers, undressing rooms. But then, of course, I don’t think he knows German, so it wouldn’t have helped very much.
Yeah, what about that?
Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter has said a number of times that the place wasn’t touched. Just open your eyes. You realize that this is utter nonsense. Virtually every brick, which was located in in one place, has been relocated to another place. Where are all the bricks of the crematoria? It’s an interesting question. There’s some mountain of bricks in Crematorium Five, but for the rest there are no bricks. I think I know where they are. The real places to sample are the farmhouses to the west of the crematoria, the farmhouses where people are living, children are playing, dogs are barking. These were rebuilt after the war with bricks of the crematoria. This site has been turned inside-out. What was inside the camp is now outside the camp.
Imagine finding out that you lived in a house built from those bricks. Though I suspect some here might be particularly pleased.
Shelly Shapiro: There is no slippery slope for Mr. Fred Leuchter. The man is an anti-Semite. There are hatemongers in this country, and he’s one of them. He handed over his entire life and reputation to the cause of spreading hatred. He didn’t stop. He kept on going. He could have gotten out at any time.
Does the gear shift again here? You decide:
David Irving: He’s been destroyed as a human being. He’s had his marriage destroyed. He’s had his life destroyed. I frankly am surprised he didn’t go and commit suicide, jump under a train. He saw everything he had built up in his own quiet, humble way destroyed by these people he had never met, whom he had offended. All he did was take the bucket and spade and go over to Auschwitz and come back with the samples. And that was an act of criminal simplicity. He had no idea of what he was blundering into. He wasn’t putting his name on the line because he had no name. He came from nowhere, and he went back to nowhere.
He's still around, in fact.
Leuchter: Of course I’m not an anti-Semite. I have a lot of friends that are Jewish. I’ve lost Jewish friends, too, because of what’s happened. I bear no ill will to any Jews anyplace, whether they’re in the United States or abroad. I bear a great deal of ill will to those people that have come after me, those people who have persecuted and prosecuted me. But that’s got nothing to do with them being Jewish. That only has to do with the fact that they’ve been interfering… with my right to live, think, breathe and earn a living. As far as being a revisionist-- At this point, I’m not an official revisionist, but I guess I’m a reluctant revisionist. If my belief that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek makes me a revisionist, then so be it. They’ve expressed their unquestioned intent of destroying me simply because I testified in Canada, not because I have any other affiliation with any anti-Semitic organization, not because I’m affiliated with any Nazi or neo-Nazi organization. I have no work. I haven’t sold a piece of equipment in almost three years. And I have no idea if this situation is gonna change.
He does get the last word. My own gut feeling is that more than anything he reveled in being treated like a hero among the Holocaust deniers. He loved it. From nobody to his very own15 minutes.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
God
“Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures.” Tiffany Madison
And how ironic is that?
“If I say ‘there is no God’, I disrespect your belief; how when you say ‘there is a God’ you do not disrespect mine?” M.F. Moonzajer
Next up: you're an agnostic.
“Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown.” Alice Walker
Let's run this by...you know.
“Pope Alexander smiled. He seemed more amused with the story than horrified. "The Baglioni are true believers," he said. "They believe in paradise. Such a great gift. How otherwise can man bear this moral life? Unfortunately, such a belief also gives evil men the courage to commit great crimes in the name of good and God.” Mario Puzo
It does work both ways, of course.
“I certainly don’t like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don’t believe in God, or at least not in the one we’ve invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they’ve invented in America, who supply their servants with toupees, television stations, and, most important, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.” Douglas Adams
This part:
Imagine hypothetically three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized into the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god[s]...their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.
Now imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe---he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?"
“You, God, who live next door
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here..." Rainer Maria Rilke
A love poem to God let's call it.
“Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures.” Tiffany Madison
And how ironic is that?
“If I say ‘there is no God’, I disrespect your belief; how when you say ‘there is a God’ you do not disrespect mine?” M.F. Moonzajer
Next up: you're an agnostic.
“Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown.” Alice Walker
Let's run this by...you know.
“Pope Alexander smiled. He seemed more amused with the story than horrified. "The Baglioni are true believers," he said. "They believe in paradise. Such a great gift. How otherwise can man bear this moral life? Unfortunately, such a belief also gives evil men the courage to commit great crimes in the name of good and God.” Mario Puzo
It does work both ways, of course.
“I certainly don’t like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don’t believe in God, or at least not in the one we’ve invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they’ve invented in America, who supply their servants with toupees, television stations, and, most important, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.” Douglas Adams
This part:
Imagine hypothetically three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized into the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god[s]...their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.
Now imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe---he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?"
“You, God, who live next door
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here..." Rainer Maria Rilke
A love poem to God let's call it.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
This is the first film in the history of Australian cinema to win 13 of the awards it was nominated for. In second place, The Piano, with 11.
At RT it got a 83% fresh rating on 64 reviews. But this film is so good I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be inside the head of someone who would describe it as rotten! How the fuck is that even possible? I guess a lot of this must be, uh, subjective?
And talk about a labor of love: the writer/director spent 7 years creating it.
This film is on my list of the top ten movies ever made. Even if that does change constantly. One thing for sure: it goes on the shelf of movies I watch over and over and over again.
No matter how many times it is done in film, the emotional and sexual awakening of a “teenager” is always something to behold. No longer a child but not yet quite an adult, most of us then are at our most vulnerable. Here things can unfold that – for better or for worse – will follow us to the grave. And all the philosophers in the world are never able to pin down what ought to unfold. There are just too many combinations of factors that get tangled up in too many combinations of contexts and relationships. You are either able to relate to them here or you are not. What draws me most to this character is how she pulls you in and pushes you away in equal measure. She is in way over her head at times. But, in reacting to her, some quickly get in way over their own. It’s just that some imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated. Compared to what?
And then there’s the part where those who are comfortably off pass moral judgments on those who are struggling just to put some food in their belly. And the part about the different options some have to fill those bellies.
As with many films of this nature what we see is invested as much in what we don’t know as in what we do. Or think we do. The narrative barely scratches the surface. Much like the main characters. But some try harder than others.
In the end she is back where she started. A bit wiser perhaps but what does that really mean in the world we live in.
Somersault
Joe [to Stewart]: This is the smallest most bullshit part of the world and you think you’re a kingfish for being in it.
And, of course, the equivalent of that here.
Richard [to Joe after they kiss]: I don’t think you know what you want.
Next up: you know what you want but you;ll never get it.
Bianca: My brother has Aspergers.
Heidi: What’s that?
Bianca: Do you know what empathy is?
Heidi: Kinda.
Bianca: It’s like if you feel pain I can understand or if I’m happy you can tell. Well, he can’t. So he can’t make friends.
Heidi: Why not?
Bianca: He just says exactly what he thinks. He doesn’t know how it’s going to make the other person feel.
And -- hint, hint -- the equivalent of that here.
Irene: I told you when I gave you this room I didn’t want any trouble.
Heidi: Yes, I know. I just…
Irene: You just what?
Heidi: I’m sorry, Irene.
Irene: No, you’re not sorry. You’ll be saying sorry til the cows come home…that’s your type.
Heidi: It was an accident.
Irene: An accident? Walking around naked and drunk at three in the morning is an accident?
Heidi: Yes.
Irene: You can pack your things and go. I need the room now.
Heidi: Why? Is your son getting out of jail?
Irene: What?!
Heidi: Is he getting out?
Irene: No. He won’t be getting out for a very long time.
Heidi: He must have done something really bad then.
Irene: Yes, he did.
Heidi: What…what did he do?
Irene: He killed a man. He walked into a 7/11 and shot a man in the stomach. Is that what you wanted to know?
Dasein with a bullet.
Heidi: My Mom’s not really dead.
Irene: What?
Heidi: Before I came here I did something really, really bad. I kissed her boyfriend. And she looked at me…she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore.
Actually, that's how it all began.
At RT it got a 83% fresh rating on 64 reviews. But this film is so good I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be inside the head of someone who would describe it as rotten! How the fuck is that even possible? I guess a lot of this must be, uh, subjective?
And talk about a labor of love: the writer/director spent 7 years creating it.
This film is on my list of the top ten movies ever made. Even if that does change constantly. One thing for sure: it goes on the shelf of movies I watch over and over and over again.
No matter how many times it is done in film, the emotional and sexual awakening of a “teenager” is always something to behold. No longer a child but not yet quite an adult, most of us then are at our most vulnerable. Here things can unfold that – for better or for worse – will follow us to the grave. And all the philosophers in the world are never able to pin down what ought to unfold. There are just too many combinations of factors that get tangled up in too many combinations of contexts and relationships. You are either able to relate to them here or you are not. What draws me most to this character is how she pulls you in and pushes you away in equal measure. She is in way over her head at times. But, in reacting to her, some quickly get in way over their own. It’s just that some imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated. Compared to what?
And then there’s the part where those who are comfortably off pass moral judgments on those who are struggling just to put some food in their belly. And the part about the different options some have to fill those bellies.
As with many films of this nature what we see is invested as much in what we don’t know as in what we do. Or think we do. The narrative barely scratches the surface. Much like the main characters. But some try harder than others.
In the end she is back where she started. A bit wiser perhaps but what does that really mean in the world we live in.
Somersault
Joe [to Stewart]: This is the smallest most bullshit part of the world and you think you’re a kingfish for being in it.
And, of course, the equivalent of that here.
Richard [to Joe after they kiss]: I don’t think you know what you want.
Next up: you know what you want but you;ll never get it.
Bianca: My brother has Aspergers.
Heidi: What’s that?
Bianca: Do you know what empathy is?
Heidi: Kinda.
Bianca: It’s like if you feel pain I can understand or if I’m happy you can tell. Well, he can’t. So he can’t make friends.
Heidi: Why not?
Bianca: He just says exactly what he thinks. He doesn’t know how it’s going to make the other person feel.
And -- hint, hint -- the equivalent of that here.
Irene: I told you when I gave you this room I didn’t want any trouble.
Heidi: Yes, I know. I just…
Irene: You just what?
Heidi: I’m sorry, Irene.
Irene: No, you’re not sorry. You’ll be saying sorry til the cows come home…that’s your type.
Heidi: It was an accident.
Irene: An accident? Walking around naked and drunk at three in the morning is an accident?
Heidi: Yes.
Irene: You can pack your things and go. I need the room now.
Heidi: Why? Is your son getting out of jail?
Irene: What?!
Heidi: Is he getting out?
Irene: No. He won’t be getting out for a very long time.
Heidi: He must have done something really bad then.
Irene: Yes, he did.
Heidi: What…what did he do?
Irene: He killed a man. He walked into a 7/11 and shot a man in the stomach. Is that what you wanted to know?
Dasein with a bullet.
Heidi: My Mom’s not really dead.
Irene: What?
Heidi: Before I came here I did something really, really bad. I kissed her boyfriend. And she looked at me…she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore.
Actually, that's how it all began.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
How bizarre?
Well, after the first scene with the Chihuahua you have your answer: really bizarre.
It’s hard to believe at times that this is the same director who gave us Audition above. An altogether different kind of horror film.
Lots of films about the yakuza and the culture it entails. But none quite like this one, I can assure you. It’s one of those films that right from the start you know anything can happen. Like the guy sitting in the middle of a vacant lot looking at porn—half his face is yellow, half his face is white. “It’s a bone”, he says, motioning to the flat tire.
It sort has a plot. And it sort of makes sense. But then all really surreal horror films do. Human reality, for example. If you look at it in a certain way.
Don’t get it? That’s like saying you don’t get dada.
The liquor store-owner’s American wife knew no Japanese, and had to read her lines phonetically off cue cards posted above her head. She proved to be absolutely hopeless at anything resembling proper pronunciation or competent acting. Director Takashi Miike found the result interesting and expanded it into an eery “Breaking the Fourth Wall” moment. IMDb
It’s priceless.
Gozu
Ozaki [to the yakuza boss]: Everything I’m about to tell you is a joke. Don’t take it seriously. See that dog outside?
Boss: Dog?
Ozaki: Dog.
[the boss goes over to look…it’s a tiny little chihuahua]
Ozaki: Don’t stare. It’s a trained yakuza attack dog. It kills only yakazu made men.
Boss: That little dog?
Ozaki: Yes!
[Ozaki walks out the door, grabs the tiny dog and smashes it onto the sidewalk…then he grabs the dog’s leash swings it around and around and hurls it against the window]
Prepare yourself in other words. The scene is just so mindboggling you almost find yourself laughing at it.
Cop: What does this Shiroyam crew do?
Minami: Forget it. I’ll find it myself.
Sort of as I recall.
Ozaki [now a woman]: Minami…did your circumcision go well? Well show me. Wow, so that’s what a circumcision does.Your weiner looks just like Frankenstein’s.
Let's not go there.
Ozaki [as a woman to Minami listening to noises coming out of her crotch]: Wanna have sex? If you feel like having sex, make sure you wake me up first.
Is that even possible?
Boss: You’ve totally lost me.
Minami: I can hardly believe it myself. But this woman is our Brother!
Boss: Minami…do you want to go to the dump? Keep talking nonsense and I’ll take you myself.
Next up: the dump here.
Boss: I can’t get it up without this.
Uh, let’s just say it involves a soup ladle sticking out of his ass.
Ozaki [as a woman, now wearing the crotchless panties she gave Minami when she was his brother…and staring at his circumcised penis]: Wow. Come here. Put it in me. Wow!
Don’t ask what comes next.
Well, after the first scene with the Chihuahua you have your answer: really bizarre.
It’s hard to believe at times that this is the same director who gave us Audition above. An altogether different kind of horror film.
Lots of films about the yakuza and the culture it entails. But none quite like this one, I can assure you. It’s one of those films that right from the start you know anything can happen. Like the guy sitting in the middle of a vacant lot looking at porn—half his face is yellow, half his face is white. “It’s a bone”, he says, motioning to the flat tire.
It sort has a plot. And it sort of makes sense. But then all really surreal horror films do. Human reality, for example. If you look at it in a certain way.
Don’t get it? That’s like saying you don’t get dada.
The liquor store-owner’s American wife knew no Japanese, and had to read her lines phonetically off cue cards posted above her head. She proved to be absolutely hopeless at anything resembling proper pronunciation or competent acting. Director Takashi Miike found the result interesting and expanded it into an eery “Breaking the Fourth Wall” moment. IMDb
It’s priceless.
Gozu
Ozaki [to the yakuza boss]: Everything I’m about to tell you is a joke. Don’t take it seriously. See that dog outside?
Boss: Dog?
Ozaki: Dog.
[the boss goes over to look…it’s a tiny little chihuahua]
Ozaki: Don’t stare. It’s a trained yakuza attack dog. It kills only yakazu made men.
Boss: That little dog?
Ozaki: Yes!
[Ozaki walks out the door, grabs the tiny dog and smashes it onto the sidewalk…then he grabs the dog’s leash swings it around and around and hurls it against the window]
Prepare yourself in other words. The scene is just so mindboggling you almost find yourself laughing at it.
Cop: What does this Shiroyam crew do?
Minami: Forget it. I’ll find it myself.
Sort of as I recall.
Ozaki [now a woman]: Minami…did your circumcision go well? Well show me. Wow, so that’s what a circumcision does.Your weiner looks just like Frankenstein’s.
Let's not go there.
Ozaki [as a woman to Minami listening to noises coming out of her crotch]: Wanna have sex? If you feel like having sex, make sure you wake me up first.
Is that even possible?
Boss: You’ve totally lost me.
Minami: I can hardly believe it myself. But this woman is our Brother!
Boss: Minami…do you want to go to the dump? Keep talking nonsense and I’ll take you myself.
Next up: the dump here.
Boss: I can’t get it up without this.
Uh, let’s just say it involves a soup ladle sticking out of his ass.
Ozaki [as a woman, now wearing the crotchless panties she gave Minami when she was his brother…and staring at his circumcised penis]: Wow. Come here. Put it in me. Wow!
Don’t ask what comes next.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
As with films like Mindwalk the “action” here revolves around folks discussing things said to be of a “philosophical” or “scientific” or “religious” nature. Intellectuals exchanging words about the world we live in. As such much depends on the extent to which the words and the worlds can be linked together intelligibly. Then on to what is offered in the way of demonstrating the truthfulness of the alleged relationships.
After all, if someone told you they had lived for 140 centuries and it was “time to move on” what sort of proof would satisfy you?
So, it’s an unrealistic premise. But that is just the sort of thing – the device – that can trigger all manner of speculation from intellectual sorts.
In a way though this sort of thing exasperates [even infuriates] me. Why? Because it is just a reminder of what it means to be a mere mortal. In other words, I will go to the grave oblivious to the answers we seek regarding the most intriguing questions of all. It’s fun and it’s fascinating to speculate about this stuff but make no mistake about it: we’ll never really know.
Or almost certainly never will. When I was young I would imagine all the answers that would be forthcoming. And there were answers. But what science has most succeeded in doing is reminding us of just how mindboggling whatever reality might actually be is. And the more mindboggling whatever the very, very big and the very, very small is the wider the gap between that and the infinitesimally tiny and utterly insignificant part our own 70 odd years must play in it.
And nope: Not a single reference to political economy. None that I picked up. By and large it was pure liberal humanism.
The film is loosely based on the Transylvanian legend of Krim Rosü (Krim Red in English), a man said to have lived thousands of years. IMDb
The Man From Earth
Harry [insistent]: You are creating the mystery here…you obviously have something you’d like to say. Say it.
John [Hesitant]: Maybe… I… There is something I’m tempted to tell you I think, I’ve never done this before, I wonder how it will pan out. I wonder if I could ask you a silly question?
Art: John, we’re teachers, we answer silly questions all the time.
John: What if a man from the upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?
Sure, why not.
John: I had a chance to sail with Columbus, only I’m not the adventurous type. I was pretty sure the earth was round, but at that point I still thought he might fall off an edge some place.
[incredulous looks all around the room]
Art: Look around John, we just did!
And John's just getting started.
Dan: There’s absolutely no way in the whole world for John to prove his story. Just like there’s no way for us to disprove it. No matter how outrageous we think it is, no matter how highly trained some of us think we are, there’s absolutely no way to disprove it! My friend is either a caveman, a liar, or a nut. So while we’re thinking about that, why don’t we just go with it.
And go with it they do, right to the very edge and then back again.
Art: What you’re saying, it offends common sense.
John: So does Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, that’s the way nature works.
Dan: Yeah, but your story doesn’t fit into nature as we know it.
Next up: nature as nature knows it.
Dan: Time… you can’t see it, you can hear it, you can’t weigh it, you can’t… measure it in a laboratory. It is a subjective sense of becoming, what we are, instead of what we were a nanosecond ago, becoming what we will be in another nanosecond. The whole piece of time’s a landscape existing, we form behind us and we move, we move through it slice by slice.
Linda: Clocks measure time.
Dan: No, they measure themselves, the objective referee of a clock is another clock.
Edith: All very interesting, but what has it got to do with John?
Dan: He, he might be man who lives outside of time as we know it.
We? That'll be the day when it comes to time.
Will: If I shot you John, you’re immortal? Would you survive this?
John: I never said I was immortal, just old. I might die. And then you could wonder the rest of your incarcerated life what you shot…
Start here: https://youtu.be/Vm7Bi1-OjEU?si=vLgsJvUpUcF-kj4N
Harry: I can give you the ten commandments in ten words: “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
"Or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else."
Harry: Edith, I was raised on the Torah, my wife on the Qu’Ran, my eldest son is an Atheist, my youngest is a scientologist, my daughter is studying Hinduism, I imagine there is room there for a holy war in my living room, but we practice live and let live.
Right, like that's what God Himself encourages us all to do.
Not.
Art: Taken alone, the philosophical teachings of Jesus are Buddhism with a Hebrew accent…kindness, tolerance, brotherhood, love…a rootless realism acknowledging that life is as it is here on earth…
John: And that’s what I taught, but a talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we’re screwed. Heaven and Hell were peddled so that priests could rule through seduction and terror.
Shh, let's not go there. Again, in other words.
Edith [talking about God]: He’s everywhere. We just can’t see him.
Harry: Pfft. If this was the best I could do, I’d be hiding, too.
Tee-hee?
Dan [to John]: I’m going home and watch Star Trek for a dose of sanity.
Yep, that's still around.
After all, if someone told you they had lived for 140 centuries and it was “time to move on” what sort of proof would satisfy you?
So, it’s an unrealistic premise. But that is just the sort of thing – the device – that can trigger all manner of speculation from intellectual sorts.
In a way though this sort of thing exasperates [even infuriates] me. Why? Because it is just a reminder of what it means to be a mere mortal. In other words, I will go to the grave oblivious to the answers we seek regarding the most intriguing questions of all. It’s fun and it’s fascinating to speculate about this stuff but make no mistake about it: we’ll never really know.
Or almost certainly never will. When I was young I would imagine all the answers that would be forthcoming. And there were answers. But what science has most succeeded in doing is reminding us of just how mindboggling whatever reality might actually be is. And the more mindboggling whatever the very, very big and the very, very small is the wider the gap between that and the infinitesimally tiny and utterly insignificant part our own 70 odd years must play in it.
And nope: Not a single reference to political economy. None that I picked up. By and large it was pure liberal humanism.
The film is loosely based on the Transylvanian legend of Krim Rosü (Krim Red in English), a man said to have lived thousands of years. IMDb
The Man From Earth
Harry [insistent]: You are creating the mystery here…you obviously have something you’d like to say. Say it.
John [Hesitant]: Maybe… I… There is something I’m tempted to tell you I think, I’ve never done this before, I wonder how it will pan out. I wonder if I could ask you a silly question?
Art: John, we’re teachers, we answer silly questions all the time.
John: What if a man from the upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?
Sure, why not.
John: I had a chance to sail with Columbus, only I’m not the adventurous type. I was pretty sure the earth was round, but at that point I still thought he might fall off an edge some place.
[incredulous looks all around the room]
Art: Look around John, we just did!
And John's just getting started.
Dan: There’s absolutely no way in the whole world for John to prove his story. Just like there’s no way for us to disprove it. No matter how outrageous we think it is, no matter how highly trained some of us think we are, there’s absolutely no way to disprove it! My friend is either a caveman, a liar, or a nut. So while we’re thinking about that, why don’t we just go with it.
And go with it they do, right to the very edge and then back again.
Art: What you’re saying, it offends common sense.
John: So does Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, that’s the way nature works.
Dan: Yeah, but your story doesn’t fit into nature as we know it.
Next up: nature as nature knows it.
Dan: Time… you can’t see it, you can hear it, you can’t weigh it, you can’t… measure it in a laboratory. It is a subjective sense of becoming, what we are, instead of what we were a nanosecond ago, becoming what we will be in another nanosecond. The whole piece of time’s a landscape existing, we form behind us and we move, we move through it slice by slice.
Linda: Clocks measure time.
Dan: No, they measure themselves, the objective referee of a clock is another clock.
Edith: All very interesting, but what has it got to do with John?
Dan: He, he might be man who lives outside of time as we know it.
We? That'll be the day when it comes to time.
Will: If I shot you John, you’re immortal? Would you survive this?
John: I never said I was immortal, just old. I might die. And then you could wonder the rest of your incarcerated life what you shot…
Start here: https://youtu.be/Vm7Bi1-OjEU?si=vLgsJvUpUcF-kj4N
Harry: I can give you the ten commandments in ten words: “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
"Or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else."
Harry: Edith, I was raised on the Torah, my wife on the Qu’Ran, my eldest son is an Atheist, my youngest is a scientologist, my daughter is studying Hinduism, I imagine there is room there for a holy war in my living room, but we practice live and let live.
Right, like that's what God Himself encourages us all to do.
Not.
Art: Taken alone, the philosophical teachings of Jesus are Buddhism with a Hebrew accent…kindness, tolerance, brotherhood, love…a rootless realism acknowledging that life is as it is here on earth…
John: And that’s what I taught, but a talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we’re screwed. Heaven and Hell were peddled so that priests could rule through seduction and terror.
Shh, let's not go there. Again, in other words.
Edith [talking about God]: He’s everywhere. We just can’t see him.
Harry: Pfft. If this was the best I could do, I’d be hiding, too.
Tee-hee?
Dan [to John]: I’m going home and watch Star Trek for a dose of sanity.
Yep, that's still around.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Joe Abercrombie from The Blade Itself
That got him thinking about his life. It seemed a bitter, pointless sort of life now. No one was any better off because of it. Full of violence and pain, with not much but disappointment and hardship in between.
Next up: that got me thinking about your life.
If a man seeks to change the world, he should first understand it.
Fuck that, right?
'No one cares about the past any more,' he whispered. 'They don't see that you can't have a future without a past.'
And whose past might that be?
One body might just be a coincidence. Two make a conspiracy.
Next up: six million bodies.
You have to learn to love the small things in life...you have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.
Posting here, for sure.
Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already, they scramble eagerly for the position of likable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and hence be everyone's friend.
Wow, not unlike me here, right?!
That got him thinking about his life. It seemed a bitter, pointless sort of life now. No one was any better off because of it. Full of violence and pain, with not much but disappointment and hardship in between.
Next up: that got me thinking about your life.
If a man seeks to change the world, he should first understand it.
Fuck that, right?
'No one cares about the past any more,' he whispered. 'They don't see that you can't have a future without a past.'
And whose past might that be?
One body might just be a coincidence. Two make a conspiracy.
Next up: six million bodies.
You have to learn to love the small things in life...you have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.
Posting here, for sure.
Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already, they scramble eagerly for the position of likable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and hence be everyone's friend.
Wow, not unlike me here, right?!
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Imagine if Romy and Michele were, say, a bit more cynical. Self-consciously, as it were.
It’s all about being an oddball. But even here it is sometimes a lot easier said than done. For example, what if your way of being odd isn’t the one others approve of? What if, in other words, you are not not conforming in the right way? Or what if you’re an oddball but don’t really want to be? Or what if you just stumbled into being one due to circumstances beyond your control?
There’s just no getting around it: In the world of “creeps and losers and weirdos” it’s always never nothing.
Still, what most oddballs do share in common is 1] knowing that they don’t want to be [or clearly are not] normal but 2] not knowing exactly what to put in its place. So many will settle on whatever works…whatever might distract them until the day they die.
Well, this oddball anyway.
And then there are those oddballs who come to think that maybe, just maybe, being normal really isn’t so bad after all.
The Coon Chicken Inn was a real restaurant chain, founded in 1925 in Salt Lake City. However it folded in the late '50s and never changed its name to Cook’s Chicken, as in the film. The ‘Coon Chicken Inn’ poster that Enid submits as her final piece for art class was painted by Robert Crumb.
According to director Terry Zwigoff, Steve Buscemi was so uncomfortable playing the role of Seymour that whenever shooting was finished for the day, he would immediately change his clothes so he could look completely different.
Ghost World
Graduation Speaker: High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. It is a time when young people can explore different fields of interest and hopefully learn from their experiences. In coming to terms with my own personal setback, I have been able to learn that I don’t need to rely on drugs and alcohol, and that I’m very lucky that more people besides myself and Carrie weren’t injured in the accident. And I have learned that to overcome life’s obstacles you need faith, hope and, above all, a sense of humor.
[as everyone else applauds, Enid and Rebecca look at each other and laugh]
Oddballs, in other words.
Enid: God, what a bunch of retards.
Rebecca: God, I know. I thought that chipmunk face was never going to shut up.
Enid: I know. I liked her so much better when she was an alcoholic crack addict. She gets in one car wreck and all of the sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everyone loves her.
Don't you just hate that?
Enid: These assholes are saying I have to go to summer school and take some stupid art class.
Rebecca: Why?
Enid: God, I didn’t think that just because you get an “F” you have to take the whole class over again.
Next up: You get an "F" here.
Sidewinder Boss: Hey! Hey! You! How many times I tell you? No shirt, no service! Get the hell out of my store! What do you think this is, Club Med?
Doug: It’s America, dude. Learn the rules.
Sidewinder Boss: Learn the rules? YOU learn the rules! We Greeks invented democracy!
Doug: You also invented homos.
Sidewinder Boss: Fuck you!
Doug [with a mouthful of beef jerky]: You wish. You gotta buy me dinner first!
Doug isn’t my kinda oddball. But he comes close from time to time.
Masterpiece Video Clerk: Hello, welcome to Masterpiece Video. How may I help you this afternoon, sir?
Customer: I’m looking for a copy of 8 1/2.
Clerk: Is that a new release, sir?
Customer: No, it’s the classic Italian film.
Clerk: Yes, sir. I’ll just check that on the computer for you, sir.
[he types on the computer]
Clerk: Yes, here it is. 9 1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke. That would be in the Erotic Drama section.
Customer: No, not 9 1/2, 8 1/2. The Fellini film?
[the clerk looks at him blankly]
Pick one:
1] that's natural
2] that's normal
[Enid takes Rebecca to a “party” at Seymour’s place, which is really just a gathering of nerdy record collectors]
Jerome: Some records I will pay serious money for, provided they’re a sincere V-plus. Other than that, I just prefer to have them on CD.
Steven: But CDs will never have the presence of an original 78.
Jerome: Wrong! A digital transfer adequately mastered will sound identical to the original. Do you have a decent equalizer?
Steven: I have a Klipsch 2B3.
Jerome: Well, obviously the problem! You expect a 10 band equalizer to impart state-of-the-art sound? Dream a little dream, it’s never gonna happen!
Rebecca [to Enid]: I totally, totally hate you.
The party from Hell and back.
Paul: It has a enlarged centre hole and a hair-crack.
Seymour: But the crack is so tight it’s completely inaudible.
Paul: But a tight hair-crack is just that - a crack. I don’t collect cracked records. I only pay premium on mint records. Seymour, you know that. Please.
[he walks away. Enid, who has been listening, goes up to Seymour]
Enid: So what was all that about enlarged holes and tight cracks?
Next up: holes and cracks here.
Enid: [looking at all the classic memorabilia in the room] Look at this room. This is like my dream room! Look at all this stuff…You are, like, the luckiest guy in the world. I would kill to have stuff like this.
Seymour: Please, go ahead and kill me.
Enid: Oh, come on, what are you talking about?
Seymour: Well, you think it’s healthy to obsessively collect things? You can’t connect with other people, so you fill your life with stuff. I’m just like all the rest of these pathetic collector losers.
Enid: No, you’re not, you’re a cool guy, Seymour!
Seymour: If I’m so cool how come I haven’t had a girlfriend in like four years? I can’t even remember the last time a girl talked to me.
Enid: I’m talking to you. You know, I bet there are tons of women who go out with you in a minute. I know I could you a date in, like, two seconds.
Seymour: Good luck.
Enid: I mean it. You leave everything to me. I’m gonna be your own personal dating service.
Seymour: Yeah, well, we should get back.
Enid: By the end of this summer, you’re gonna be up to your neck in pussy.
Seymour: Jesus!
Just not her's alas.
Seymour [to Enid]: Now I remember why I haven’t been anywhere in months. It’s simple for everybody else. You give them a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they’re happy. I can’t relate to ninety-nine percent of humanity.
Well, that’s still almost an entire percentage point more than I can.
[Enid is looking through some posters at Seymour’s place and discovers this grotesque, racist caricature of a black man’s face - the logo of Coon Chicken Inn]
Enid: What the…? What is this, Seymour?
Seymour: Oh, that. I borrowed that from work about 15 years ago. I guess it’s mine now.
Enid: What, are you a Klansman or something?
Seymour [sarcastically]: Yeah, I’m a Klansman.
She, uh, borrows it for art class!
Enid [looking at the racist logo of Coon Chicken Inn]: So, I don’t really get it…Are you saying that things were better back then, even though there was stuff like this?
Seymour: I suppose things are better now, but…I don’t know, it’s complicated. People still hate each other but they just know how to hide it better.
Not here though, right?
Customer: Do you serve beer or any alcohol?
Enid: I wish. Actually, you wish. After about five minutes of this movie you’re going to wish you had ten beers.
Cineplex Manager: What are you doing? You don’t ever criticize the feature.
Enid: Why? What’s the difference? I mean, we already got his money.
Cineplex Manager: Look, that’s the policy, OK? If you want to make up your own rules open up your own theater.
Customer: …and let me have lots of butter on it.
Enid: Here you go. Smothered in delicious yellow chemical sludge.
Cineplex Manager: What the hell is wrong with you?
Enid: What? I was just joking around with the customers. It’s my shtick.
Cineplex Manager: Well, lose it! And why aren’t you pushing the larger sizes? Didn’t you get training about upsizing?
Enid: Yeah. But I feel really weird. It’s pretty sleazy.
Cineplex Manager: It’s not OPTIONAL!
[he leaves her]
Enid [rolls her eyes] Jesus.
[a customer comes up to the counter]
Soda Customer: Hi, can I get a medium 7-Up?
Enid: Medium? Why sir, do you not know that for a mere 25 cents more you can purchase a large beverage? And you know, I’m only telling because we’re such good friends, medium is really only for suckers who don’t know the concept of value.
You gotta love Enid.
Enid: How come in all that time I was trying to get you a date, you never asked me out?
Seymour [surprised]: You’re a beautiful young girl, I couldn’t imagine you’d have any interest in me except as an amusingly cranky eccentric curiosity.
Enid: At least you’re not like every other stupid guy in the world. All they care about is guitars or sports.
Seymour: I do hate sports.
Well, not counting soccer or lacrosse, of course.
Seymour: I know I’m just a dork.
Enid: Seymour, you are not a dork.
[he shows her the entry about the fake date]
Seymour: Sure I am.
Enid: You are such a stupid idiot. Did you even look through the rest of the book? See? You’re like…my hero.
Cue Norman.
It’s all about being an oddball. But even here it is sometimes a lot easier said than done. For example, what if your way of being odd isn’t the one others approve of? What if, in other words, you are not not conforming in the right way? Or what if you’re an oddball but don’t really want to be? Or what if you just stumbled into being one due to circumstances beyond your control?
There’s just no getting around it: In the world of “creeps and losers and weirdos” it’s always never nothing.
Still, what most oddballs do share in common is 1] knowing that they don’t want to be [or clearly are not] normal but 2] not knowing exactly what to put in its place. So many will settle on whatever works…whatever might distract them until the day they die.
Well, this oddball anyway.
And then there are those oddballs who come to think that maybe, just maybe, being normal really isn’t so bad after all.
The Coon Chicken Inn was a real restaurant chain, founded in 1925 in Salt Lake City. However it folded in the late '50s and never changed its name to Cook’s Chicken, as in the film. The ‘Coon Chicken Inn’ poster that Enid submits as her final piece for art class was painted by Robert Crumb.
According to director Terry Zwigoff, Steve Buscemi was so uncomfortable playing the role of Seymour that whenever shooting was finished for the day, he would immediately change his clothes so he could look completely different.
Ghost World
Graduation Speaker: High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. It is a time when young people can explore different fields of interest and hopefully learn from their experiences. In coming to terms with my own personal setback, I have been able to learn that I don’t need to rely on drugs and alcohol, and that I’m very lucky that more people besides myself and Carrie weren’t injured in the accident. And I have learned that to overcome life’s obstacles you need faith, hope and, above all, a sense of humor.
[as everyone else applauds, Enid and Rebecca look at each other and laugh]
Oddballs, in other words.
Enid: God, what a bunch of retards.
Rebecca: God, I know. I thought that chipmunk face was never going to shut up.
Enid: I know. I liked her so much better when she was an alcoholic crack addict. She gets in one car wreck and all of the sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everyone loves her.
Don't you just hate that?
Enid: These assholes are saying I have to go to summer school and take some stupid art class.
Rebecca: Why?
Enid: God, I didn’t think that just because you get an “F” you have to take the whole class over again.
Next up: You get an "F" here.
Sidewinder Boss: Hey! Hey! You! How many times I tell you? No shirt, no service! Get the hell out of my store! What do you think this is, Club Med?
Doug: It’s America, dude. Learn the rules.
Sidewinder Boss: Learn the rules? YOU learn the rules! We Greeks invented democracy!
Doug: You also invented homos.
Sidewinder Boss: Fuck you!
Doug [with a mouthful of beef jerky]: You wish. You gotta buy me dinner first!
Doug isn’t my kinda oddball. But he comes close from time to time.
Masterpiece Video Clerk: Hello, welcome to Masterpiece Video. How may I help you this afternoon, sir?
Customer: I’m looking for a copy of 8 1/2.
Clerk: Is that a new release, sir?
Customer: No, it’s the classic Italian film.
Clerk: Yes, sir. I’ll just check that on the computer for you, sir.
[he types on the computer]
Clerk: Yes, here it is. 9 1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke. That would be in the Erotic Drama section.
Customer: No, not 9 1/2, 8 1/2. The Fellini film?
[the clerk looks at him blankly]
Pick one:
1] that's natural
2] that's normal
[Enid takes Rebecca to a “party” at Seymour’s place, which is really just a gathering of nerdy record collectors]
Jerome: Some records I will pay serious money for, provided they’re a sincere V-plus. Other than that, I just prefer to have them on CD.
Steven: But CDs will never have the presence of an original 78.
Jerome: Wrong! A digital transfer adequately mastered will sound identical to the original. Do you have a decent equalizer?
Steven: I have a Klipsch 2B3.
Jerome: Well, obviously the problem! You expect a 10 band equalizer to impart state-of-the-art sound? Dream a little dream, it’s never gonna happen!
Rebecca [to Enid]: I totally, totally hate you.
The party from Hell and back.
Paul: It has a enlarged centre hole and a hair-crack.
Seymour: But the crack is so tight it’s completely inaudible.
Paul: But a tight hair-crack is just that - a crack. I don’t collect cracked records. I only pay premium on mint records. Seymour, you know that. Please.
[he walks away. Enid, who has been listening, goes up to Seymour]
Enid: So what was all that about enlarged holes and tight cracks?
Next up: holes and cracks here.
Enid: [looking at all the classic memorabilia in the room] Look at this room. This is like my dream room! Look at all this stuff…You are, like, the luckiest guy in the world. I would kill to have stuff like this.
Seymour: Please, go ahead and kill me.
Enid: Oh, come on, what are you talking about?
Seymour: Well, you think it’s healthy to obsessively collect things? You can’t connect with other people, so you fill your life with stuff. I’m just like all the rest of these pathetic collector losers.
Enid: No, you’re not, you’re a cool guy, Seymour!
Seymour: If I’m so cool how come I haven’t had a girlfriend in like four years? I can’t even remember the last time a girl talked to me.
Enid: I’m talking to you. You know, I bet there are tons of women who go out with you in a minute. I know I could you a date in, like, two seconds.
Seymour: Good luck.
Enid: I mean it. You leave everything to me. I’m gonna be your own personal dating service.
Seymour: Yeah, well, we should get back.
Enid: By the end of this summer, you’re gonna be up to your neck in pussy.
Seymour: Jesus!
Just not her's alas.
Seymour [to Enid]: Now I remember why I haven’t been anywhere in months. It’s simple for everybody else. You give them a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they’re happy. I can’t relate to ninety-nine percent of humanity.
Well, that’s still almost an entire percentage point more than I can.
[Enid is looking through some posters at Seymour’s place and discovers this grotesque, racist caricature of a black man’s face - the logo of Coon Chicken Inn]
Enid: What the…? What is this, Seymour?
Seymour: Oh, that. I borrowed that from work about 15 years ago. I guess it’s mine now.
Enid: What, are you a Klansman or something?
Seymour [sarcastically]: Yeah, I’m a Klansman.
She, uh, borrows it for art class!
Enid [looking at the racist logo of Coon Chicken Inn]: So, I don’t really get it…Are you saying that things were better back then, even though there was stuff like this?
Seymour: I suppose things are better now, but…I don’t know, it’s complicated. People still hate each other but they just know how to hide it better.
Not here though, right?
Customer: Do you serve beer or any alcohol?
Enid: I wish. Actually, you wish. After about five minutes of this movie you’re going to wish you had ten beers.
Cineplex Manager: What are you doing? You don’t ever criticize the feature.
Enid: Why? What’s the difference? I mean, we already got his money.
Cineplex Manager: Look, that’s the policy, OK? If you want to make up your own rules open up your own theater.
Customer: …and let me have lots of butter on it.
Enid: Here you go. Smothered in delicious yellow chemical sludge.
Cineplex Manager: What the hell is wrong with you?
Enid: What? I was just joking around with the customers. It’s my shtick.
Cineplex Manager: Well, lose it! And why aren’t you pushing the larger sizes? Didn’t you get training about upsizing?
Enid: Yeah. But I feel really weird. It’s pretty sleazy.
Cineplex Manager: It’s not OPTIONAL!
[he leaves her]
Enid [rolls her eyes] Jesus.
[a customer comes up to the counter]
Soda Customer: Hi, can I get a medium 7-Up?
Enid: Medium? Why sir, do you not know that for a mere 25 cents more you can purchase a large beverage? And you know, I’m only telling because we’re such good friends, medium is really only for suckers who don’t know the concept of value.
You gotta love Enid.
Enid: How come in all that time I was trying to get you a date, you never asked me out?
Seymour [surprised]: You’re a beautiful young girl, I couldn’t imagine you’d have any interest in me except as an amusingly cranky eccentric curiosity.
Enid: At least you’re not like every other stupid guy in the world. All they care about is guitars or sports.
Seymour: I do hate sports.
Well, not counting soccer or lacrosse, of course.
Seymour: I know I’m just a dork.
Enid: Seymour, you are not a dork.
[he shows her the entry about the fake date]
Seymour: Sure I am.
Enid: You are such a stupid idiot. Did you even look through the rest of the book? See? You’re like…my hero.
Cue Norman.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The T word: Trans. Then the S word: Stealth.
It’s mindboggling what Bree has to go through in order to become who she really wants to be. So how can any one in their right mind doubt the underlying motivation behind her commitment.
Fortunately, even in the years since this film came out the political narrative in America has come closer and closer to accepting this motivation as sincere and genuine. But there is still a very, very big chunk of the population out there that wants to blast this [and the rest of the LGBT movement] back into the stone age.
Only a fool would actually risk being too optimistic about it. Not in what some still construe to be Amerikkka.
And now with MAGA controlling the White House the Congress and the Supreme Court...?
And then there is Stanley and his gay son. But that’s just another way of saying Bree and her gay son. Of course, Toby doesn’t know that. Yet. And then…just like that…things get very complicated.
Like, for example, the parts that God and religion play. As in different strokes for different folks.
Transamerica
Dr. Spikowsky: Medical procedures to date?
Bree: The usual electrolysis, three years of hormone therapy, facial feminizatiom surgury, brow lift, forehead reduction, jaw re-contouring and a tracheal shave.
Of course, it's all worth it.
Dr. Spikowsky: How can I help you if you won’t be honest with me.
Bree: You can sign that consent form. Please.
Dr. Spikowsky: The American Psychiatric Association catagorizes gender dysphoria as a very serious mental disorder.
Bree: After my operation not even a gynecologist will be able to detect anything out of the ordinary about my body. I will be a woman. Don’t you find it odd that plastic surgery can cure a mental disorder?
Dr. Spikowsky: How do you feel about your penis?
Bree [giving up]: It disgusts me. I don’t even like looking at it.
Dr. Spikowsky: What about friends?
Bree: They don’t like it either.
Of course, we'll need to know why.
Trans friend: Mary Ellen, come here, Felicia is showing us her new vagina.
What's the warranty on that?
Toby: Dude, I thought you were a real guy.
Transman at party: We walk among you.
For now, right, Don?
Toby: Did you know that the Lord of the Rings is gay?
Bree: I beg your pardon.
Toby: There’s this big, black tower, right? And it points right at this huge burning vagina thing, and it’s like the symbol of ultimate evil. And then Sam and Frodo have to go to this cave and deposit their magic ring into this hot, steaming lava pit. Only at the last minute, Frodo can’t perform, so Gollum bites of his finger. Gay.
Where's Astro Cat when you need her?
Toby: So, you’re gonna cut your dick off for Jesus?
Bree: They don’t “cut it off!” It just becomes an innie instead of an outtie.
Toby: Ew.
You can say that again, he said again.
Bree [getting ready to face her parents]: Shit. I mean darn. No, I mean shit.
A trans thing let's call it.
Elizabeth: Look at your life. You’ve never been able to stick to a decision. I mean, 10 years of college and not a single degree. How do you know you won’t change your mind about this, too?
[pause]
Bree: Because I know.
Elizabeth: Don’t do this awful thing to yourself, please. I miss my son.
Bree: Mom, you never had a son.
Does that work for you?
Elizabeth [crying]: We only tried to do the best for you.
Bree: Is that why you tried to have me committed?
Elizabeth [shouting]: You tried to kill yourself!
Bree: Because you tried to have me committed!
And around and around they go.
It’s mindboggling what Bree has to go through in order to become who she really wants to be. So how can any one in their right mind doubt the underlying motivation behind her commitment.
Fortunately, even in the years since this film came out the political narrative in America has come closer and closer to accepting this motivation as sincere and genuine. But there is still a very, very big chunk of the population out there that wants to blast this [and the rest of the LGBT movement] back into the stone age.
Only a fool would actually risk being too optimistic about it. Not in what some still construe to be Amerikkka.
And now with MAGA controlling the White House the Congress and the Supreme Court...?
And then there is Stanley and his gay son. But that’s just another way of saying Bree and her gay son. Of course, Toby doesn’t know that. Yet. And then…just like that…things get very complicated.
Like, for example, the parts that God and religion play. As in different strokes for different folks.
Transamerica
Dr. Spikowsky: Medical procedures to date?
Bree: The usual electrolysis, three years of hormone therapy, facial feminizatiom surgury, brow lift, forehead reduction, jaw re-contouring and a tracheal shave.
Of course, it's all worth it.
Dr. Spikowsky: How can I help you if you won’t be honest with me.
Bree: You can sign that consent form. Please.
Dr. Spikowsky: The American Psychiatric Association catagorizes gender dysphoria as a very serious mental disorder.
Bree: After my operation not even a gynecologist will be able to detect anything out of the ordinary about my body. I will be a woman. Don’t you find it odd that plastic surgery can cure a mental disorder?
Dr. Spikowsky: How do you feel about your penis?
Bree [giving up]: It disgusts me. I don’t even like looking at it.
Dr. Spikowsky: What about friends?
Bree: They don’t like it either.
Of course, we'll need to know why.
Trans friend: Mary Ellen, come here, Felicia is showing us her new vagina.
What's the warranty on that?
Toby: Dude, I thought you were a real guy.
Transman at party: We walk among you.
For now, right, Don?
Toby: Did you know that the Lord of the Rings is gay?
Bree: I beg your pardon.
Toby: There’s this big, black tower, right? And it points right at this huge burning vagina thing, and it’s like the symbol of ultimate evil. And then Sam and Frodo have to go to this cave and deposit their magic ring into this hot, steaming lava pit. Only at the last minute, Frodo can’t perform, so Gollum bites of his finger. Gay.
Where's Astro Cat when you need her?
Toby: So, you’re gonna cut your dick off for Jesus?
Bree: They don’t “cut it off!” It just becomes an innie instead of an outtie.
Toby: Ew.
You can say that again, he said again.
Bree [getting ready to face her parents]: Shit. I mean darn. No, I mean shit.
A trans thing let's call it.
Elizabeth: Look at your life. You’ve never been able to stick to a decision. I mean, 10 years of college and not a single degree. How do you know you won’t change your mind about this, too?
[pause]
Bree: Because I know.
Elizabeth: Don’t do this awful thing to yourself, please. I miss my son.
Bree: Mom, you never had a son.
Does that work for you?
Elizabeth [crying]: We only tried to do the best for you.
Bree: Is that why you tried to have me committed?
Elizabeth [shouting]: You tried to kill yourself!
Bree: Because you tried to have me committed!
And around and around they go.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
The first thing that always pops into my head: What about all the thousands upon thousands of “freaks” throughout the course of human history who went to grave never having fortuitously bumped into someone like the good doctor.
In the interim there really isn’t anything at all that one or another capitalist hasn’t managed to turn into a commodity. Human deformities were often particularly lucrative. They could be sold as entertainment. To the masses, for instance.
And then there are the scientists. And the doctors. Those in particular who treat him less as a commodity and more as a…specimen.
What strikes me is the sheer monotony of his life. They all assume he is an “imbecile”…so they assume that nothing can reach him. And so hour after hour and day after day he is left with nothing to distract him save his meals and the photograph he has of his mother. But here again the doctor turns the tide.
And the surreal juxtaposition of God and this particular creation. Merrick read the Bible and he knows it quite well. But he does indeed embody the manner in which the Lord works in mysterious ways. It was God no doubt that led Treves to him. Some will surely argue that.
And then there is the freak that some become [or are made into] once they have achieved fame. Can you even begin to imagine it all unfolding today? Fortunately for Merrick it is the wealthy aristocrats who by and large rescue him from the mob.
Gaps between film and “reality”:
According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘The Elephant Man’, there are several historical inaccuracies that stand out. First, the events at the railway station happened before Merrick stayed at the hospital. Second, Merrick went to Europe on his own accord and was never kidnapped. Third, Treves never “rescued” Merrick from the completely fictional character of Bytes (who was “seemingly modelled after Robert Newton’s characterisation of Bill Sykes in David Lean’s 1948 film adaptation of Oliver Twist”).
Additionally, in order for Merrick to speak there were several operations to facilitate his ability to talk. Merrick was also quite secure financially from the work he did in the freak shows–he would have been incapable of performing any other work in those days. Finally, his name was not “John” but “Joseph”.
Following the death of the real Joseph “John” Merrick, parts of his body were preserved for medical science to study. Some internal organs were kept in jars, and plaster casts were taken of his head, an arm, and a foot. Although the organs were destroyed by German air raids during the Second World War, the casts survived and are kept at the London Hospital. The makeup for John Hurt, who played Merrick in the film, was designed directly from those casts.
Merrick’s condition was undiagnosed at the time of his death. Later studies of his skeleton and the casts made of his body led researchers to suggest he suffered from neurofibromatosis (NF) type I, a genetic condition that 1 in 4,000 persons suffer from. The NF Foundation used the movie as a fund raising tool and credited it with making the disease more widely known. Later examination, including CT scans of the skeleton, lead researchers to believe he suffered from Proteus syndrome, a much rarer condition than NF. A scientist in 2001 speculated that Merrick may have suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. In 2003, researchers used surviving DNA samples from Merrick in an attempt to determine his unique condition. However these tests were inconclusive and the cause of Joseph Merrick’s medical condition remains unknown. IMDb
The Elephant Man
Bytes: Life!.. is full of surprises. Consider the fate of this creature’s poor mother, struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant, a wild elephant. Struck down!.. on an uncharted African isle. The result is plain to see… Ladies and gentlemen…The…Terrible… Elephant… Man…
Sure, why not?
Dr. Trevers [to his colleagues]: He is English, he is twenty-one years of age and his name is John Merrick. Gentlemen, in the course of my profession I have come upon lamentable deformities of the face due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body, depending upon like causes; but, at no time have I met with such a dearaded or perverted version of a human being as this man. I wish to draw your attention to the insidious conditions affecting this patient. Note, if you will, the extreme enlargement of the skull … and upper limb, which is totally useless. The alarming curvature of the spine … Turn him, please … … the looseness of the skin, and the varying fibrous tumors that cover 90% of the body. And there is every indication that these afflictions have been in existence, and have progressed rapidly, since birth. The Patient also suffers from chronic bronchitis. As an interesting side-note, in spite of the afore-mentioned anomilies, the patient’s genitals remain entirely intact and unaffected. So then, gentlemen, owing to this series of deformities: The congenital exostoses of the skull; extensive papillomatous growths and large pendulous masses in connection with the skin; the great enlargement of the right upper limb, involving all the bones; the massive distortion of the head and the extensive areas covered by papillomatous growth, the patient has been called, "The Elephant Man.’
They have to call him something, right?
Dr. Fox: You never mentioned his mental state.
Dr. Treves: Oh, he’s an imbecile, probably from birth. Man’s a complete idiot… Pray to God he’s an idiot.
That last part in particular, right?
Dr. Treves: All you do is profit from another man’s misery.
Bytes: Do you think you are better than me?
Dr. Treves: No, I never said that.
Bytes: You wanted the freak to show to those doctor chums of yours, to make a name for yourself. You my friend. I gave you the freak on trust…in the name of science…and now I want him back!
Any freaks here care to comment?
Gomm: Can you imagine the kind of life he must have had?
Dr. Treves: Yes, I think I can.
Gomm: I don’t think so. No one could possibly imagine it! I don’t believe any of us can!
Of course, that's true for all of us. Though point taken by all means.
Mrs. Treves: I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Merrick.
Merrick: I’m very pleased…
[John begins to cry]
Dr. Treves: What is it, John? What’s the matter?
Merrick: It’s just that I-I’m not used to being treated so well by a beautiful woman…
He's not the only one: https://youtu.be/JTiBYVdLxKk?si=ivEQvydiArol9yZc
Merrick [after seeing pictures of Dr. Treves’ family]: Would you care to see my mother?
Dr. Treves [surprised]: Your mother? Yes please.
[John pulls out a small portrait]
Mrs. Treves: Oh but she’s…Mr. Merrick, she’s beautiful!
Merrick: Oh, she had the face of an angel! I must have been a great disappointment to her.
Mrs. Treves: No, Mr. Merrick, no. No son as loving as you could ever be a disappointment.
Merrick: If only I could find her, so she could see me with such lovely friends here now; perhaps she could love me as I am. I’ve tried so hard to be good.
[Mrs. Treves begins to cry]
I shed a few tears here myself.
Merrick: There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time now.
Dr. Treves: What’s that?
Merrick: Can you cure me?
Dr. Treves: No. We can care for you, but we can’t cure you.
Merrick [matter-of-factly]: No. I thought not.
Lots of freaks can't be cured. Philosophically or otherwise.
Mothershead: Sir! I don’t quite… I don’t quite understand why it is you allow that sort of people in there.
Dr. Treves: Why? Because he enjoys it, and I think it’s very good for him.
Mothershead: Yes, but, sir, you saw the expression on their faces. They didn’t hide their disgust. They don’t care anything about John! They only want to impress their friends!
Dr. Treves: I think you’re being rather harsh on them, don’t you, Mrs. Mothershead?
Mothershead: I beg your pardon!
Dr. Treves: You yourself hardly showed him much loving kindness when he first arrived, did you?
Mothershead: I bathed him, I fed him, and I cleaned up after him, didn’t I? And I see that my nurses do the same. And if “loving kindness” can be called care and practical concern, then I did show him loving kindness, and I am not ashamed to admit it!..If you ask my opinion he is only being stared at all over again.
He should have met up with these folks: https://youtu.be/39Bnk6VU53Y?si=LeNU6HT0WqQAXC4G
In the interim there really isn’t anything at all that one or another capitalist hasn’t managed to turn into a commodity. Human deformities were often particularly lucrative. They could be sold as entertainment. To the masses, for instance.
And then there are the scientists. And the doctors. Those in particular who treat him less as a commodity and more as a…specimen.
What strikes me is the sheer monotony of his life. They all assume he is an “imbecile”…so they assume that nothing can reach him. And so hour after hour and day after day he is left with nothing to distract him save his meals and the photograph he has of his mother. But here again the doctor turns the tide.
And the surreal juxtaposition of God and this particular creation. Merrick read the Bible and he knows it quite well. But he does indeed embody the manner in which the Lord works in mysterious ways. It was God no doubt that led Treves to him. Some will surely argue that.
And then there is the freak that some become [or are made into] once they have achieved fame. Can you even begin to imagine it all unfolding today? Fortunately for Merrick it is the wealthy aristocrats who by and large rescue him from the mob.
Gaps between film and “reality”:
According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘The Elephant Man’, there are several historical inaccuracies that stand out. First, the events at the railway station happened before Merrick stayed at the hospital. Second, Merrick went to Europe on his own accord and was never kidnapped. Third, Treves never “rescued” Merrick from the completely fictional character of Bytes (who was “seemingly modelled after Robert Newton’s characterisation of Bill Sykes in David Lean’s 1948 film adaptation of Oliver Twist”).
Additionally, in order for Merrick to speak there were several operations to facilitate his ability to talk. Merrick was also quite secure financially from the work he did in the freak shows–he would have been incapable of performing any other work in those days. Finally, his name was not “John” but “Joseph”.
Following the death of the real Joseph “John” Merrick, parts of his body were preserved for medical science to study. Some internal organs were kept in jars, and plaster casts were taken of his head, an arm, and a foot. Although the organs were destroyed by German air raids during the Second World War, the casts survived and are kept at the London Hospital. The makeup for John Hurt, who played Merrick in the film, was designed directly from those casts.
Merrick’s condition was undiagnosed at the time of his death. Later studies of his skeleton and the casts made of his body led researchers to suggest he suffered from neurofibromatosis (NF) type I, a genetic condition that 1 in 4,000 persons suffer from. The NF Foundation used the movie as a fund raising tool and credited it with making the disease more widely known. Later examination, including CT scans of the skeleton, lead researchers to believe he suffered from Proteus syndrome, a much rarer condition than NF. A scientist in 2001 speculated that Merrick may have suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. In 2003, researchers used surviving DNA samples from Merrick in an attempt to determine his unique condition. However these tests were inconclusive and the cause of Joseph Merrick’s medical condition remains unknown. IMDb
The Elephant Man
Bytes: Life!.. is full of surprises. Consider the fate of this creature’s poor mother, struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant, a wild elephant. Struck down!.. on an uncharted African isle. The result is plain to see… Ladies and gentlemen…The…Terrible… Elephant… Man…
Sure, why not?
Dr. Trevers [to his colleagues]: He is English, he is twenty-one years of age and his name is John Merrick. Gentlemen, in the course of my profession I have come upon lamentable deformities of the face due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body, depending upon like causes; but, at no time have I met with such a dearaded or perverted version of a human being as this man. I wish to draw your attention to the insidious conditions affecting this patient. Note, if you will, the extreme enlargement of the skull … and upper limb, which is totally useless. The alarming curvature of the spine … Turn him, please … … the looseness of the skin, and the varying fibrous tumors that cover 90% of the body. And there is every indication that these afflictions have been in existence, and have progressed rapidly, since birth. The Patient also suffers from chronic bronchitis. As an interesting side-note, in spite of the afore-mentioned anomilies, the patient’s genitals remain entirely intact and unaffected. So then, gentlemen, owing to this series of deformities: The congenital exostoses of the skull; extensive papillomatous growths and large pendulous masses in connection with the skin; the great enlargement of the right upper limb, involving all the bones; the massive distortion of the head and the extensive areas covered by papillomatous growth, the patient has been called, "The Elephant Man.’
They have to call him something, right?
Dr. Fox: You never mentioned his mental state.
Dr. Treves: Oh, he’s an imbecile, probably from birth. Man’s a complete idiot… Pray to God he’s an idiot.
That last part in particular, right?
Dr. Treves: All you do is profit from another man’s misery.
Bytes: Do you think you are better than me?
Dr. Treves: No, I never said that.
Bytes: You wanted the freak to show to those doctor chums of yours, to make a name for yourself. You my friend. I gave you the freak on trust…in the name of science…and now I want him back!
Any freaks here care to comment?
Gomm: Can you imagine the kind of life he must have had?
Dr. Treves: Yes, I think I can.
Gomm: I don’t think so. No one could possibly imagine it! I don’t believe any of us can!
Of course, that's true for all of us. Though point taken by all means.
Mrs. Treves: I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Merrick.
Merrick: I’m very pleased…
[John begins to cry]
Dr. Treves: What is it, John? What’s the matter?
Merrick: It’s just that I-I’m not used to being treated so well by a beautiful woman…
He's not the only one: https://youtu.be/JTiBYVdLxKk?si=ivEQvydiArol9yZc
Merrick [after seeing pictures of Dr. Treves’ family]: Would you care to see my mother?
Dr. Treves [surprised]: Your mother? Yes please.
[John pulls out a small portrait]
Mrs. Treves: Oh but she’s…Mr. Merrick, she’s beautiful!
Merrick: Oh, she had the face of an angel! I must have been a great disappointment to her.
Mrs. Treves: No, Mr. Merrick, no. No son as loving as you could ever be a disappointment.
Merrick: If only I could find her, so she could see me with such lovely friends here now; perhaps she could love me as I am. I’ve tried so hard to be good.
[Mrs. Treves begins to cry]
I shed a few tears here myself.
Merrick: There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time now.
Dr. Treves: What’s that?
Merrick: Can you cure me?
Dr. Treves: No. We can care for you, but we can’t cure you.
Merrick [matter-of-factly]: No. I thought not.
Lots of freaks can't be cured. Philosophically or otherwise.
Mothershead: Sir! I don’t quite… I don’t quite understand why it is you allow that sort of people in there.
Dr. Treves: Why? Because he enjoys it, and I think it’s very good for him.
Mothershead: Yes, but, sir, you saw the expression on their faces. They didn’t hide their disgust. They don’t care anything about John! They only want to impress their friends!
Dr. Treves: I think you’re being rather harsh on them, don’t you, Mrs. Mothershead?
Mothershead: I beg your pardon!
Dr. Treves: You yourself hardly showed him much loving kindness when he first arrived, did you?
Mothershead: I bathed him, I fed him, and I cleaned up after him, didn’t I? And I see that my nurses do the same. And if “loving kindness” can be called care and practical concern, then I did show him loving kindness, and I am not ashamed to admit it!..If you ask my opinion he is only being stared at all over again.
He should have met up with these folks: https://youtu.be/39Bnk6VU53Y?si=LeNU6HT0WqQAXC4G
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Death
“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.” Clarice Lispector
I tried that once myself.
And now look at me.
“Our life is made by the death of others.” Leonardo da Vinci
Bummer. If only all the way to the grave ourselves.
“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.” Neil Gaiman
Not much that doesn't explain about most us.
“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.” Eckhart Tolle
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.” Samuel Beckett
You can always count on him to cheer you up.
“Make death proud to take us.” William Shakespeare
How's that working out for you?
“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.” Clarice Lispector
I tried that once myself.
And now look at me.
“Our life is made by the death of others.” Leonardo da Vinci
Bummer. If only all the way to the grave ourselves.
“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.” Neil Gaiman
Not much that doesn't explain about most us.
“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.” Eckhart Tolle
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.” Samuel Beckett
You can always count on him to cheer you up.
“Make death proud to take us.” William Shakespeare
How's that working out for you?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
I suspect there are no plans in Hollywood to remake this one. And not just because they don’t make all that many “epics” anymore. To say this was a whole different time may well qualify as the mother of all understatements. Or surely it falls somewhere in, say, the top 1,000.
And my own political perspectives are now busted to the point I really don’t know anymore if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Most of these folks were genuinely commited to making this a world more fit to live in. And that meant redistributing the world’s wealth and power. And that meant revolution. But then it gets all tangled up in means and ends. And in the limitations human reality seems to impose on idealism situated anywhere along the moral and political spectrum.
But this is the sort of life I pursued myself: always in the midst of intellectuals, artists, writers, political radicals. Endless discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And endless arguments that never ever got resolved. The constant struggle to find some sort of balance between the “personal” and the “political”. And also at a time – “the Sixties” – rather far removed from the world as I know it today. I’m just considerably more cynical about the whole experience than most others.
What the film does expose rather well [if only incidentally] is how the ruling class functions to sustain itself: through the law, through the police and the army, through the corporate media, through the cronies in the government. But capitalism in America has always managed historically to sustain a rather sizable middle class. And that always acts as a buffer against radicalism.
This is the story of John Reed. The only American to be buried in the Kremlin. Or one of the very few. Over here though he spent as much time railing against his “comrades” as against the capitalists. That’s always been a big factor on the left: factionalism. A veritable alphabet soup of organizations all claiming to represent the true interests of “the people”. In fact, it’s always easier to name the problem than the solution. Let alone actually organize a movement to achieve one.
But what extraordinary lives they led. And what an extraordinary love story.
Reds
Chairman of the Liberal Club: What would you says this war is all about, Jack Reed.
Reed [he stands up]: Profits.
Bet you never thought that, right?
Reed: All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don’t you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can’t you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won’t get it back! More coffee? America’d be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan’s money. If he loses, we’ll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won’t lose money?
Next up: the real answer.
Reed: Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control.
Of course, that settles that.
Reed: Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don’t know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don’t they? Well, what if they got organized?
Oh, they're organized alright....around Trump.
Emma Goldman: I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.
Just imagine her around today!
Bryant: He has the freedom to do the things he wants to do and so do I. And I think anyone who’s afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.
O’Neill: Are you making this up as you go along?
Bryant: I’d like you to go.
O’Neill: Why?
Btyant: Because I don’t like to be patronized. I’m sorry if you don’t beleive in mutual independence and free love and respect.
O’Neill: Don’t give me a lot of parlor socialism that you learned in the Village. If you were mine, I wouldn’t share you with anybody or anything. It’d be just you and me. We’d be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work.
Now this takes me back...
Reed: Louise, I love you.
Bryant: No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK! When you’re not fucking other people, that is!
Back when the personal and the political really were more fully intertwined. Or one hell of a lot more than they are today.
Reed: I’m just saying that the revolution in this country is not going to be led by immigrants.
Bryant: Revolution? In this country? When Jack, just after Christmas?
Reed: Well what do you think we could’ve done with the steel strike if we’d been ready? 30,000 party members all armed with a unified theory and program leading 365,000 steelworkers? What it takes is leadership. And we gotta get it by getting recognition from Moscow. Now I have to go.
Bryant: You don’t have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What’s the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you’re running one and he’s running the other?
Reed: I’ve made a commitment.
Bryant: To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the Internationale for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not?
Yep, been there. Just under considerably less momentous circumstances.
O’Neill: Russia. Russia.
Bryant: Are you really that cynical?
O’Neill: I’m really that cynical.
Bryant: Gene, if you had been to Russia, you’d never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.
O’Neill: Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual’s eyes shine and they start to talk to me about the Russian people. Something in me says, “Watch it. A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.” And I wonder why a lovely wife of Louise Reed who’s just seen this brave new world is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It’s almost worth being converted.
Next up: Putin and Trump.
O’Neill: Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who’s one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by his party. And you dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it’ll be missionary work rather than sex. I’m sorry to see you and Jack so serious about your sports. It’s particularly disappointing in you, Louise. You had a lighter touch when you were touting free love.
Bryant: Boy, you’ve become quite the critic, haven’t you, Gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I’ve never seen you do anything for anyone. I’ve never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have.
So, who won?
Grigory Zinoviev: Comrade Reed, you have a place on the train! You have a place on the train of this revolution. You have been like so many others, the best revolutionaries. One of the engineers on the locomotive of this train that pulls this revolution on the tracks of historical necessity laid out for it by the Party. You can’t leave us now. We can’t replace you. Why do you have to leave? To see your wife? Last year at the International Congress I learned my son was very ill with typhus. I didn’t go to see my son because I knew I was needed where I was placed by the Party. Would you like to abandon this moment in your life? Would you ever get this moment again?
The rest, alas, is history.
Goldman: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying in Russia. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land, the workers taking the factories, Russia’s the one place where there’s no Bolshevism.
Reed: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with the generals. I can’t deal with a bureaucrat.
Goldman: You think Zinoviev is nothing worse than a bureaucrat? The Soviets have no local autonomy. The central state has all the power. All the power is in the hands of a few men and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any real hope of Communism in Russia. They are putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters, and I want no part of it.
Reed: You sound like you are a little confused about the revolution in action. Up to now, you’ve only dealt with it in theory. What did you think this thing was going to be…a revolution by consensus? A revolution where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?
Goldman: Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting war…they died from starvation and typhus and a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights and nothing works.
Reed: They died because of a French, British and American blockade that cut off all food and medical supplies and because counter-revolutionaries have sabotaged the factories and the railroads and the telephones, and because the people, the poor ignorant, superstitious, illiterate people, are trying to run things themselves, just as you always said they should, but they don’t know how to run them yet. Did you really think things would work right away? Did you really think that revolutionary social transformation would be anything other than a murderous process? It’s a war, E.G. and we gotta fight it like we fight a war, with discipline, with terror, with firing squads or we just give it up.
New thread?
And my own political perspectives are now busted to the point I really don’t know anymore if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Most of these folks were genuinely commited to making this a world more fit to live in. And that meant redistributing the world’s wealth and power. And that meant revolution. But then it gets all tangled up in means and ends. And in the limitations human reality seems to impose on idealism situated anywhere along the moral and political spectrum.
But this is the sort of life I pursued myself: always in the midst of intellectuals, artists, writers, political radicals. Endless discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And endless arguments that never ever got resolved. The constant struggle to find some sort of balance between the “personal” and the “political”. And also at a time – “the Sixties” – rather far removed from the world as I know it today. I’m just considerably more cynical about the whole experience than most others.
What the film does expose rather well [if only incidentally] is how the ruling class functions to sustain itself: through the law, through the police and the army, through the corporate media, through the cronies in the government. But capitalism in America has always managed historically to sustain a rather sizable middle class. And that always acts as a buffer against radicalism.
This is the story of John Reed. The only American to be buried in the Kremlin. Or one of the very few. Over here though he spent as much time railing against his “comrades” as against the capitalists. That’s always been a big factor on the left: factionalism. A veritable alphabet soup of organizations all claiming to represent the true interests of “the people”. In fact, it’s always easier to name the problem than the solution. Let alone actually organize a movement to achieve one.
But what extraordinary lives they led. And what an extraordinary love story.
Reds
Chairman of the Liberal Club: What would you says this war is all about, Jack Reed.
Reed [he stands up]: Profits.
Bet you never thought that, right?
Reed: All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don’t you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can’t you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won’t get it back! More coffee? America’d be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan’s money. If he loses, we’ll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won’t lose money?
Next up: the real answer.
Reed: Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control.
Of course, that settles that.
Reed: Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don’t know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don’t they? Well, what if they got organized?
Oh, they're organized alright....around Trump.
Emma Goldman: I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.
Just imagine her around today!
Bryant: He has the freedom to do the things he wants to do and so do I. And I think anyone who’s afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.
O’Neill: Are you making this up as you go along?
Bryant: I’d like you to go.
O’Neill: Why?
Btyant: Because I don’t like to be patronized. I’m sorry if you don’t beleive in mutual independence and free love and respect.
O’Neill: Don’t give me a lot of parlor socialism that you learned in the Village. If you were mine, I wouldn’t share you with anybody or anything. It’d be just you and me. We’d be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work.
Now this takes me back...
Reed: Louise, I love you.
Bryant: No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK! When you’re not fucking other people, that is!
Back when the personal and the political really were more fully intertwined. Or one hell of a lot more than they are today.
Reed: I’m just saying that the revolution in this country is not going to be led by immigrants.
Bryant: Revolution? In this country? When Jack, just after Christmas?
Reed: Well what do you think we could’ve done with the steel strike if we’d been ready? 30,000 party members all armed with a unified theory and program leading 365,000 steelworkers? What it takes is leadership. And we gotta get it by getting recognition from Moscow. Now I have to go.
Bryant: You don’t have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What’s the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you’re running one and he’s running the other?
Reed: I’ve made a commitment.
Bryant: To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the Internationale for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not?
Yep, been there. Just under considerably less momentous circumstances.
O’Neill: Russia. Russia.
Bryant: Are you really that cynical?
O’Neill: I’m really that cynical.
Bryant: Gene, if you had been to Russia, you’d never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.
O’Neill: Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual’s eyes shine and they start to talk to me about the Russian people. Something in me says, “Watch it. A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.” And I wonder why a lovely wife of Louise Reed who’s just seen this brave new world is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It’s almost worth being converted.
Next up: Putin and Trump.
O’Neill: Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who’s one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by his party. And you dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it’ll be missionary work rather than sex. I’m sorry to see you and Jack so serious about your sports. It’s particularly disappointing in you, Louise. You had a lighter touch when you were touting free love.
Bryant: Boy, you’ve become quite the critic, haven’t you, Gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I’ve never seen you do anything for anyone. I’ve never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have.
So, who won?
Grigory Zinoviev: Comrade Reed, you have a place on the train! You have a place on the train of this revolution. You have been like so many others, the best revolutionaries. One of the engineers on the locomotive of this train that pulls this revolution on the tracks of historical necessity laid out for it by the Party. You can’t leave us now. We can’t replace you. Why do you have to leave? To see your wife? Last year at the International Congress I learned my son was very ill with typhus. I didn’t go to see my son because I knew I was needed where I was placed by the Party. Would you like to abandon this moment in your life? Would you ever get this moment again?
The rest, alas, is history.
Goldman: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying in Russia. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land, the workers taking the factories, Russia’s the one place where there’s no Bolshevism.
Reed: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with the generals. I can’t deal with a bureaucrat.
Goldman: You think Zinoviev is nothing worse than a bureaucrat? The Soviets have no local autonomy. The central state has all the power. All the power is in the hands of a few men and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any real hope of Communism in Russia. They are putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters, and I want no part of it.
Reed: You sound like you are a little confused about the revolution in action. Up to now, you’ve only dealt with it in theory. What did you think this thing was going to be…a revolution by consensus? A revolution where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?
Goldman: Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting war…they died from starvation and typhus and a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights and nothing works.
Reed: They died because of a French, British and American blockade that cut off all food and medical supplies and because counter-revolutionaries have sabotaged the factories and the railroads and the telephones, and because the people, the poor ignorant, superstitious, illiterate people, are trying to run things themselves, just as you always said they should, but they don’t know how to run them yet. Did you really think things would work right away? Did you really think that revolutionary social transformation would be anything other than a murderous process? It’s a war, E.G. and we gotta fight it like we fight a war, with discipline, with terror, with firing squads or we just give it up.
New thread?